The Reins of Power
by Eildon Rhymer
Summary: At twenty, Aragorn discovers that he is the hereditary captain of a people he has never met, but it will take many years and he will endure many hardships before he becomes a true leader of men.
1. The World of Men

**The Reins of Power**

_At twenty, Aragorn discovers that he is the hereditary captain of a people he has never met, but it will take many years and he will endure many hardships before he becomes a true leader of men._

* * *

I am posting this as a single story with five chapters. However, I could just as easily have posted it as a series consisting of five separate short stories. Each "chapter" is complete in itself, and there are no cliffhangers. However, each "chapter" makes references to the events of the earlier ones, and they are intended to be read in order. Each "chapter" is set some time – usually several years – after the previous one. The entire story (c. 32,000 words) is already written, but needs quite a bit of editing. I hope to post a part every few days.

This is my attempt to clarify my own head canon of Aragorn's backstory, in particular his life with the northern Dúnedain. Obviously, it's a subject that other authors have already played with, but I couldn't resist playing with it myself.

* * *

**I: The World of Men**

So this was what Men smelled like, thought Estel, from his quiet place in the corner. It was smoke and sweat and something foul and bitter. It was meat and salt, and earth, too, but not the earth he was familiar with.

He took an experimental sip from the drink they had given him: beer, they called it. It was not pleasant. The bitter smell came from the beer, he decided: years of spillages seeping into the woodwork and the gaps between the stone flags. None of the Men seemed to mind it. The smoke came from the fire, which at least was familiar, but a strange and more aromatic smoke issued from the mouths of some of the Men. His father had told him about galenas, a plant with no healing virtues, and Estel had laughed to hear that hobbits liked to burn it and inhale the smoke through reed-like things called pipes. It seemed that the habit had spread to some Men. Estel could not understand it.

Of course, he reminded himself, Elrond was not his father, and he was not called Estel, after all. Perhaps he would have to understand it, if he were to become… whatever it was that he would become.

He tried the beer again, but it was no less foul. The inn was filling up. He understood that there were parlours where people could eat and drink in peace, but many Men chose to eat in the crowded common room, slamming down bowls of salty stew, elbowing their friends to make room for them at the bench. They ate messily, in a way that was unpleasant to watch. Many of them did not know how to hold a spoon, and few used a napkin properly. They even spoke with their mouths full.

_My people, _he reminded himself. He looked down into his beer, at his reflection distorted by froth. The bitter smell made him want to wrinkle his nose.

The Men were talking throughout, shouting insults at each other that after an anxious while, he concluded were good humoured. Then the singing started. It was like no singing he had ever heard. It was louder and harsher, and when everyone sang in chorus, their voices were all slightly different. This music was not liquid sunlight or flowing water, but something loud and jagged, with rhythmic beats in it like the pounding of a hammer. The expected response to it was not quiet dreaming, but raucous banging on the table in time with those beats.

Estel found his own foot tapping under the table. He tried the beer again, and wondered if it was a taste that improved upon renewed acquaintance; certainly, none of the Men in the Prancing Pony seemed displeased by it. Some of them started moving with a clumsy, exaggerated expansiveness that Estel did not understand. "I think you've had a bit too much, mate," he heard one man say, from which he concluded that this was what drunkenness looked like.

He took another mouthful of beer, and turned his gaze inwards, using the skills his father had taught him. Yes, the potency of the brew was there, trying to work on him. He posted an internal guard against it, but truth was, he would have to drink far more than this one small tankard for the beer to challenge his defences. Given how vile the brew was, he doubted that would ever be a problem.

Time passed. A tall man came in all alone; Estel only noticed him because he was struck with a sudden conviction that this man was commanding everyone to pay him no heed. Half shrouded in his hood, Estel watched him. The tall man meandered through the crowd like a snake or a dancer, slipping through gaps without drawing the eye. He ordered beer from the bar, though, and the landlord nodded at him and took his coin, exchanging a few words. Not invisible, then, just inconspicuous.

_I wonder why, _Estel thought, but he, of course, was doing exactly the same. There were many reasons to go unnoticed, and many ways to hide.

A group of Men pushed past his table, fighting about a girl. No, Estel realised, when they laughed; not a fight, just banter. He wondered how old they were. He thought they were little more than boys, but he had no point of comparison. His own face was the only young Man's face he knew, pale and grave in the mirror. He knew now that he came from a long-lived race, so would other young Men of twenty look older or younger than he did? He knew, because he had seen it in books, that Men grew wrinkled and grey when they were old, but he had never seen such a thing until this day. His mother was not much over forty, and had faint lines between her brow, but Arwen – _oh, Arwen!_ – was nearly three thousand years old, but untouched by any frost.

"…then she'll never look at _you_," said one of the boys, and the others laughed, and they went off arm in arm, teasing each other, and attempting song.

_Friends, _Estel thought, letting out a breath. _Equals. _In Rivendell, he was loved, but he would be forever a child. If he was successful in finding his mother's people, then he would be… _What? _he thought. _I wonder…_

No, this was not the time for it. He tried to find the tall man again, but he had lost him in the crowd. Perhaps he had left… No, there he was, having found a corner much like Estel's, in another niche between pillars. Estel watched him for a while, in the way he would with a nervous animal, watching him while seeming not to. The man seemed unaware of him, wrapped in his own silence like a cloak. He appeared to be drinking steadily, but from the way he held his tankard, Estel thought he was actually drinking barely at all.

He wondered whether to ask about him, then decided not to. A group of hobbits came in, and the crowd of Men parted tolerantly to let them reach the bar. Firelight glittered on the tall man's keen eyes.

The landlord came hurrying by, dishing out rebukes and greetings with equal-handedness. Two young men were to be ashamed of letting their young brother drink so much, "and what will your mother say when she finds out?" A dark-haired man was warned that he was here on sufferance, "and any repeat of your old nonsense, and you're barred for good this time." A farmer was greeted like a long-lost friend. Empty bowls were tidied away, and empty tankards were filled, sometimes without asking, although money was still expected.

Estel put his hand over his tankard when the landlord approached. "No more, young sir?" the landlord asked, even so. He hesitated somewhat over the epithet, but whether he was doubting the "young" or the "sir," Estel did not know.

Estel was alone in a strange land. Always, before, when he had seen something puzzling or unclear, there had been his father or his brothers on hand with a ready explanation.

"No more," he said, but he took the risk, and he said more, for the landlord's bulk hid him from the tall man in his corner. "A man came in not long ago." He was careful to say it naturally: 'man,' not 'Man.' "No, do not turn round. He was tall, came in alone, spoke to nobody but you. He wears a grey cloak. Who is he?"

The landlord's face turned less than friendly. "Why? I'll have no fighting here."

Estel spread his free hand, showing it empty; the landlord, he trusted, would not recognise the calluses made by a sword. "I just wondered. Nobody paid him any attention." _But he seemed remarkable, _he could have carried on, but did not; surely that much was obvious.

"That's because he's not worth any attention," said the landlord, "if he's who I think you mean. He's just one of them Rangers. Some say they're no-good fellows who steal chickens and wander off into dark places where no goodly folk have any cause to be. Me, I see no harm in them, but little good, either. But they pay their way and cause no trouble, so they're welcome here. So is everyone," he said, a little more pointedly than was necessary, "who pays their way and causes no trouble."

Estel decided that it was a hint. He removed his hand from the tankard, and let the landlord top it up, and paid what was asked. The landlord appeared surprised by the coin that was offered, but took it, anyway. After he had gone, the man at the end of the bench laughed, and shuffled up to Estel's side. "You, my friend, just got yourself royally ripped off."

Estel was not sure what 'ripped off' meant, but could hazard a guess from context. "The landlord is dishonest?"

"Old Butterbur? No, he's a good 'un. But you were meant to haggle. He never expected you just to pay up like that. You're a green 'un, aren't you?"

Estel attempted another sip of beer. He had killed a dozen orcs in one fight. He had survived a month in the wilderness alone. His father had deemed him fit to receive his birthright. He dared aspire to the hand of the most beautiful maiden in the world.

"You look too old to be this green," said the man. "You look…" He frowned. "No, I can't rightly tell how old you are. But you're not from these parts, I can tell that, seeing as how you speak fancy-like."

"Do I?" Estel thought back to the snatched conversations he had heard that evening, and tried to catch their accent, their intonation. "I don't think I do, my friend."

"Well, you don't _now_." The man swatted him on the upper arm.

Estel knew about hunting. He knew how to hide himself in the long grass, so that nobody who passed would notice him. He knew how to pass unseen through wild places, and how to walk through the woods so that no twig bent beneath his feet. He was a Man, and he could pass, it seemed, as many things, except as a Man.

He let his gaze pass slowly, casually across the crowded common room, noting turns of phrase, and the way people moved, and the things that they said. His father had once told him that Men considered elves to be cryptic, fond of riddles and words that led you obliquely to the truth. Men were worse, Estel decided. They said one thing, but meant another. They spoke in hints and innuendo. Sometimes their insults conveyed friendship, and sometimes their smiles covered hatred. He knew their language, but in all the ways that mattered, he knew their language not at all.

But that, too, could be learned.

The tall man was still in his corner. A Ranger, the landlord had said. Was this just ignorant vernacular, or was this man indeed one of Estel's mother's people? The Rangers of the North; that was what his fa- what Elrond had called them. He had come across them in books, and had even been drawn to their stories, but not even his mother had told him the truth, telling him only that he was the son of a brave man who had died. Was this man one of his mother's… _My father's people, _thought the Man who was not, after all, called Estel, whose true father was not, in fact, Elrond. _My people. _

Aragorn wondered if he should approach the Ranger; he had, after all, left Rivendell in part to find his people. But, _you're a green 'un, _he remembered. He had known as soon as he entered the inn that he could defeat any one of these Breelanders in a sword fight. He could ride faster and walk further and survive horrors that would send them screaming. He had a lineage more noble than any Man in Middle Earth, and one day, if that was to be his fate, he might be King.

But he did not know how to pay for a pint of beer. He could not tell when a man was teasing, or when he meant to fight. It had not even occurred to him, at first, to change the way he spoke. He should not have asked the landlord about the tall man, but he was unused to being without older, wiser kin whom he trusted with his life.

_I am not ready, _he thought. If this man was a Ranger, then Aragorn was his Chieftain. How could he be their Chieftain when until tonight he had never been in a room with another Man?

The Ranger was not looking in his direction. Aragorn waited until a crowd blocked him from view, and stood up. "Here," he said to his helpful bench companion, imitating the local accent as well as he could. "I don't feel so good. You can finish my beer."

He wove through the crowd the same way the Ranger had done, trying to convey the same sense of inconspicuousness. Outside was a shock. The fresh air was cold, and achingly familiar. A few steps away from the inn, and he was free of the smell of old beer. The smell of wood smoke took him back to Rivendell, to singing in the Hall of Fire. A few more steps, and then a few more, and he was outside even the range of the smoke. He let out a breath, and felt his shoulders gradually lose a tension he had not been aware of carrying.

_And what a strange thing it is, _he thought, _for the heir of the Kings of Men to feel more at home outside, alone, then in a room full of Men. _

Just for that thought, he almost turned and went back in again. He could evade the Ranger; evasion was something he had been taught. When the time was right, he would seek them out, but not yet. He would…

The sword tip found the side of his throat. He heard the hiss of the other man's breath behind him. It was intentional, he thought, although he did not know how he knew. Estel moved his head slowly to the side, and the sword tip followed his movement, although it no longer touched him.

"A little young," said a voice, "to be out alone?"

Estel nodded. The sword withdrew, although only just. "Perhaps," he agreed. He sensed that he had surprised the other man. Perhaps the man had expected him to bluster and say that he was a man full grown, and how dare anybody say otherwise?

Estel turned round, and his attacker let him. It was the Ranger from the inn, of course. Estel… No, _Aragorn_ was a green one, after all. He had been so sure that the Ranger had not noticed him; so sure that he had kept himself inconspicuous, even as he had seen through the other man's desire to remain unseen.

The Ranger's eyes shone black and silver in the moonlight. "How old are you, lad?"

Aragorn wondered how to answer. He was aware of the different accents of the elves, but until today had never realised that Men, too, spoke in many ways. "Young enough to be a fool," he answered, in the accents of Bree, "but old enough to know it." The Ranger did not smile, but something flickered in his eyes. "Why pick on me? There were plenty younger lads back there in the inn."

"True," the Ranger agreed, "but they mature young, live slight lives, and die before their time."

Aragorn glanced down at the silver sword. "And I do not?"

"Perhaps not," said the Ranger. "What do you say?"

Aragorn looked hard at the sword, then at the Ranger, then at the sword again. The Ranger's hand twitched, as if he was fighting the urge to sheathe it. "I say," Aragorn said, "that you should put that sword away and stop threatening innocents in the dark."

The Ranger laughed, a harsh, strained sound. "The accent has promise and the act is not bad, but to play the part properly, you should have screamed about murder and robbery the moment you felt my sword." He took half a step closer, his voice low. "And you should not have tried to hide from me in the inn."

"I thought I had," Aragorn admitted, with a wry smile.

The Ranger returned his smile. "Alas, no. It takes a master to evade all notice, and you are no master."

"Not yet," Aragorn agreed. The inn door opened, bringing with it a waft of smoke and a blaze of orange light. Aragorn shifted position, so his own face was in shadow and the Ranger's was in the light. The Ranger, he realised, was well aware of what he was doing, and was willing to allow it. _Because he is confident, _Aragorn thought. _Why?_ "You tried to evade notice," he pointed out to the Ranger, "yet I saw you."

"Yes." The door closed again, and Aragorn lost the advantage of the light. In the sudden contrast, he was almost blind. "Yes," said the Ranger, "you did. And why is that?" He stepped closer. "Who are you, who wears the clothing of the elves but the face of Númenor? Tell me, boy. Who are you?"

The urge to answer was almost overwhelming. Aragorn dug his nails into his palm. _No, _he thought, _I will not tell him, not this way. _The compulsion disappeared like a candle flame blown out by the wind. "I had a sheltered childhood," he said, "and now that I am a man, I wish to see the world." He had lost the accent of Bree, he realised, but it mattered not; the Ranger had never been fooled.

"Which is no answer." The Ranger was breathing rapidly, his left hand pressed to his chest. "I understand your caution, if you are…" He shook his head. "You should not have been able to…" He let out a breath. "Can you not trust me?"

"You put a sword to my throat," Aragorn reminded him. "I drew no weapon."

"True." The Ranger sheathed his sword with a sigh. "But I have said out loud a name that should not have been spoken here, where unfriendly ears can listen from dark houses. But because I have said it, I will say it again. Your face is unmistakeable. Maybe in time you will learn to hide it, but you cannot do so yet. Or maybe you choose not to." His hand once again sought the hilt of his sword. "The stories tell of Dark Númenoreans. Maybe such creatures still exist, and use their faces to win the trust of those that they would undo."

"I did not seek to win your trust," said Aragorn. "I merely sought to pass unseen, as you did."

"As I did." The Ranger pressed his hand to his face, the fingertips digging in to either side of his brow. "And now I have said too much."

What would happen if Aragorn just walked away? Although the Ranger looked heartsore and shaken, Aragorn had no doubt that he could draw his sword in an instant. But even if he did not, what would happen if Aragorn walked away? One day, in the future, Aragorn had to show himself to these people, and assume his rightful place. His actions today would be remembered. He was their rightful Chieftain by lineage, but true respect had to be earned. For one wild, heady moment, Aragorn had forgotten that, but then he had looked into Arwen's eyes, and realised that great ancestors meant nothing unless the one who possessed them showed themselves worthy of them.

He closed his eyes for a moment, wrestling with thought. Even if he wandered for a year, for five years, for ten years, it would never be easy to return to his father's people. Now was as good a time as any.

"And so I, too, will say more than perhaps I should," Aragorn said, pitching his voice too low to be heard by anyone who might be listening in the darkness. "I was brought up in Rivendell. I am twenty years old, and until this year, I knew only that I was called Estel, and that Master Elrond stood in the place of my true father. But my true father was called Arathorn."

"Ah," sighed the Ranger. "Ah, yes. I will not doubt you, for I see the truth in your face. I was thinking all along that you reminded me of someone, but until you named him, I could not put a name to the memory." He made as if to grab Aragorn's hand, but drew back. He made as if to bow, but did not. "We feared you were dead. Lord Elrond assured us that we still had cause to hope, but he would say no more than that, and so some of us dared to doubt."

"Dared to?" Aragorn asked, unable to stop himself.

"It requires courage, of a sort, to keep going despite lack of hope." The Ranger smiled. "But I was not one of those. I was newly married when the last Chieftain… when your father died. In due course, my wife gave me a son. He used to ask me why we lived as we did." The Ranger seemed to remember suddenly where they were. Although they had been talking quietly, he moved them further out into the darkness, away from any listening ears. "I said we lived to protect the heir of… the one whose heir you are," he whispered. "Who was this heir, he asked me, and when would he see him? I told him that we had to be ready for the heir when he came to us, and if he did not…?"

Aragorn said nothing. He had thought for weeks, he realised, about what it meant to discover that he was Isildur's heir. He thought he had also considered what such a person might mean to the Dúnedain, but he realised now that he had barely considered it at all.

"If he did not," said the Ranger, "then it would change nothing, I told him. We are the old nobility of Arnor. We guard the small folk from foes of which they are heedless. That is our task, and will be until the world is changed."

Estel had no words. These were not his people. He was not worthy of making them his people. Any arrogance, any pride, had faded when Arwen looked into his eyes, and died utterly in the face of this man's simple devotion.

_No, not Estel, but Aragorn, _he thought, because he could not escape who he was. To walk away would be a betrayal worse than any pride.

"I did not know who I was," he said. "Elrond brought me up as one of his own, but I was always kept away from any visitors, but it was so subtly done that only now do I see it for what it was." _I would have come before, had I known, _he meant.

The Ranger nodded gravely, as if accepting the protestation Aragorn had not made out loud. "And we were still welcomed in Rivendell, but subtly kept from asking those questions we most wanted to ask, and from receiving answers from those we that did ask." The Ranger stopped, then opened his mouth to speak, then stopped again. At length he tried again. "Is your mother…?"

"She is alive and well," Aragorn said, with a smile, "and still resides in Rivendell."

"That is good news indeed," said the Ranger. "Her mother never doubted it, but it will ease her heart to hear it." He laughed suddenly. "But harken to me! What fools we mortal Men can be! First I threaten you, and now we stand chatting like hobbits on market day. This is not the place for extravagant gestures, but this is no common day." He bowed his head, the movement barely visible in the darkness. "My name is Halbarath, my lord."

Aragorn bowed his head, acknowledging the respect. "My name is Aragorn," he said, although Halbarath surely knew this already.

Halbarath pressed his hand to his chest, this time, perhaps, in salute, not consternation. "But we are in Bree, and far from safety," he said, "so if you consent, I will not call you lord again where others can hear."

_Do not call me lord at all, _Aragorn almost said. It would have been different before he had met Arwen, of course. Then he had been filled with the pride of his position. Now he knew little, only that he had so much to learn, and a lifetime to prove himself worthy of his name.

The inn door opened; they had left it far behind, Aragorn realised. He watched the dark figures leaving, and heard the snatches of raucous song. If he were to be true to his heritage, these Breelanders were his people, as much as the Rangers were. He would have to learn their ways. He would have to protect them and bleed for them and be ready to die for them. He would have no early heir, if Elrond's words were true, but to be the heir of kings meant nothing for its own sake. It was better to live well, but let his bloodline die, than preserve the bloodline, but walk away from those who needed him.

_Ah, Arwen, _he thought, _what wisdom you taught me with a glance. _And, of course, the greatest wisdom that she had taught him was the knowledge that he was not yet wise.

"What will you do now?" Halbarath asked him. "You said you intended to see the world."

"And learn," Aragorn said. _And show Arwen that I am worthy. _"Elrond has taught me much lore and healing, and I have gone on long errantries with his sons, but I know little of Men, and nothing of my father's people but what is told in the old scrolls of kings."

"Did you intend," asked Halbarath, sounding almost shy, "to seek us out?"

"I… did," Aragorn said. He wondered whether to say the next bit, but decided on honesty. "I feared it, too."

"That is understandable," Halbarath said. Aragorn sensed rather than saw the smile, and knew that he had made the right decision. "But now that you have met me, will you come and live with us?"

Aragorn had meant to answer yes, but other words came to him unbidden, as had happened when he had spoken to Elrond about Arwen. "Others paths will call me," he said, "and I will walk many distant roads before the ending comes, although whether this ending will be for good or ill, none yet can tell." The flow of words left him. The image of dark roads faded. "But I would come and live with you for a little while first, for as many years as I may."

"You have foresight." Halbarath sounded choked. "Of course you do." Aragorn dimly saw him pressing his hands to his face, scraping them over his mouth, and then away, down, to clasp them over his chest. "And how would you come to live with us?"

Of course he was asking if Aragorn intended to return as an exiled king, and take up the mantle of leadership that his father had never ceded, despite his death. Aragorn had no idea how to answer. If he answered yes, would his people resent him as an upstart stranger who demanded honour merely because of his bloodline? If he answered no, would they despise him because he was weak?

_You're a green 'un, _he remembered. It brought with it memories of those boys who had not, after all, been fighting, and the landlord who had never expected to be paid a whole gold piece for two finger widths of foul beer.

"I cannot deny who I am," he said. "Our people live as they do because they hold bloodlines to be important. But I know little of Men, and even less of my father's people. I have fought many battles, but I have never led anyone else into battle. I have never given orders upon which another life might depend. And I am just twenty years old." _So old, _he had thought just half a year ago. _So young, _he had thought, when Arwen had looked upon him, and smiled. "How can I claim to lead you in any way that matters?"

Halbarath took his hand and squeezed it; brought it towards his lips and almost kissed it, but did not. "You can," he said, "in all those ways that matter here." He released Aragorn's hand, and once again pressed his hand to his chest. "But you are right," he said. "Present yourself as our Chieftain by blood. They will expect nothing else, and they will draw hope from it, more hope than you could ever imagine. But if you will accept my advice, then hear this. Do not put yourself forward as Chieftain in more practical matters, not yet. They will honour you all the more for it. Our boys come late to adulthood. We honour an honest admission of ignorance more than we honour false pride."

Aragorn gave a self-deprecating chuckle. "And I am indeed ignorant."

Halbarath laughed. "I noticed. Old Butterbur couldn't believe his eyes when you gave him that gold piece." He was back in his Breeland speech with all its contractions, but he said more than he knew. Aragorn had been so sure that Halbarath had been unable to see his dealings with Butterbur. "But I jest," Halbarath said, suddenly solemn. "My son Halbarad is fifteen years old. If he is half as wise as you are at twenty, I shall consider myself blessed."

Aragorn shook his head. "I am not wise."

Halbarath clapped a hand on his shoulder. "I beg to differ. Skills can be learned, but a man is so much more than the skills he possesses. I am no loremaster, but I believe that no man has become truly great, who has not at one time admitted that he knew nothing at all."

"Then I admit it," Aragorn said, "but not because I seek to be great. I left Rivendell…" _Because of Arwen, _he thought. "I left Rivendell because once I knew who I was, I had to discover who I could become. In truth, I looked for a friend to guide me."

"And perhaps you have found one," Halbarath said, "if I can so presume. If you seek my guidance, my guidance is this. Go to your people, and go to them now. It matters not that you know little of Men. Eighteen years is a long time to live with dwindling hope. Your father's sworn sword brother, Berenor, has been leading us in the absence of a rightful Chieftain. He is a good man, and he has led us well. He will offer to pass command to you, but I would advise you to refuse. They will think the better of you for it, if you say to them what you said to me. When you feel yourself ready to become Chieftain in fact as well as by right, he will yield the title with nothing but joy."

"Then I will do as you advise." Aragorn nodded his thanks. He was suddenly, quite unexpectedly, terrified by the prospect, but he kept his voice level. "I thank you." The inn door opened again, far, far away, in another world. They both watched the dark figures leave. _Will you come with me? _he wanted to ask, but did not. If Elrond was right, he would walk dark, solitary roads before his ending came. He would be tested in far deeper ways that this, just meeting his own father's people, who would greet him with joy, or so he was told.

"I will come with you," Halbarath said, "if you would like me to."

Aragorn laughed. "I would like you to, very much." He reached for Halbarath's hand, and clasped it. "I am glad to have met you."

"Ah," said Halbarath, "but will you feel the same in a year? Our life is not an easy one."

"I know," Aragorn said, suddenly solemn, "but it will be my life, and not just by birth, but by choice."

And, side by side, they headed back towards the inn, and the new world that lay beyond it.


	2. The Life of a Man

**II: The Life of a Man**

_Aragorn has been with the Dúnedain for two years, but although he is their chieftain, he is not yet in command. When three Rangers go missing, Aragorn faces his first real test as a leader, with men's lives depending on the choices that he makes._

* * *

The old warrior sat against a slender tree, a naked sword across his lap.

Aragorn approached him from behind. He knew where the watchers were concealed, and was careful to choose a path that kept him hidden from their eyes. Autumn leaves were thick on the ground, and not all had become damp enough to be silent. A cold wind blew down from the north, shivering those leaves that remained on the trees. He watched the way the branches moved, and made sure to move only when the gusts reached the nearest trees. _You will not hear me, _he willed.

A blackbird landed on a holly bush, looking for berries that were not yet ripe. Aragorn stood utterly still until the bird had flown away, not wanting to provoke its alarm call. The old warrior had not moved. Aragorn took a sideways step, putting the tree trunk fully between him and his quarry. A leaf blew across his face, brushing the side of his neck, catching against the brooch that fastened his cloak, but he could not risk brushing it away. He took another step. He reached for his sword, moving his arm away from his body to prevent cloth brushing against cloth. A gust of wind, stronger than before, covered his next step, and the next.

He was several paces away when the old warrior spoke. "You are four steps behind the tree, and slightly to my left."

Aragorn let out a breath, and took those last few steps. "What gave me away?"

Perhaps there was a smile in Berenor's eyes, but his mouth was not made for smiling. "I cheated," he said simply. He nodded towards the sword across his lap, its bright blade angled backwards to catch the reflection of movement.

Aragorn considered it for a moment. "It was not really cheating, then, but a lesson. Enemies will not play by the rules."

"And you would have been alert for such behaviour, had I really been an enemy," Berenor said. "You trusted me to play by the rules, and I did not." He looked tired, his face etched with more lines than had been there two years before. "In truth, the only way I can win this game against you now is if I cheat. Even when you came to us, already you knew almost as much about woodcraft and wilderness survival as the best of us."

Aragorn crouched down beside him. He hesitated a moment over whether to say it, but credit had to be given when it was due. "I had good teachers. I rode with the sons of Elrond for many years."

Berenor's mouth tightened a little, as Aragorn had expected it to. Aragorn had been unsure at first if it was indeed dislike that he was seeing. Instinct had told him so from the start, but his unfamiliarity with the facial expressions of Men had caused him to doubt his own instincts. Many Rangers considered elves to be inscrutable, but at first, Aragorn had found his brothers' faces far easier to read than the faces of these dour Rangers who were to be his own people.

But it was indeed dislike; he knew this now. At length he had dared to ask his brothers about it. Many of the skills that the Rangers used were the same as those Aragorn had learned from Elladan and Elrohir. Of course they were, Elladan had told him, because the sons of Elrond had taught Aragorn's forefathers for many centuries. When the Dúnedain had first taken to the wilderness, Elladan and Elrohir had been there to show them the way.

That was when Aragorn had asked the question. "So why does Berenor dislike it when I talk about you?"

Elladan had looked sorrowful; _not inscrutable at all, _Aragorn had thought even then. "Because he loved your father as a brother, and because your father was riding with us when he died."

"But surely he cannot blame you?" Aragorn had asked him.

Elladan had shaken his head. "We were there, and Berenor was not, he who always rode at your father's right hand. Who did Berenor blame as he wept in the night in that first bitter season of his loss?"

"The orcs were to blame," Aragorn had said with confidence.

Elladan had pressed a hand to Aragorn's shoulder. "Grief is a complicated thing, as is regret. You are still young, and you were raised in the House of Elrond, and you have known neither. It is hard for you to understand." But Elladan was an elf, and Berenor was a Man, as was Aragorn. Aragorn ought to be able to understand why Berenor reacted as he did.

"I may be skilled in woodcraft," Aragorn said now, crouching at Berenor's side, "but I still have much to learn from you."

"Perhaps," Berenor said. He looked deeply weary. He was getting old, and although he had the blood of Númenor, he was not of the line of kings. For twenty years he had borne a burden of leadership that had never truly wanted. Aragorn might be young and unfamiliar with the ways of Men, but he had learned that much within days of his arrival.

But it was early, it was still too early, for Aragorn to take that burden away from him. Aragorn was Chieftain by right, and nobody questioned that, but a threatened, dwindling people needed their day-to-day commands to come from somebody who knew how to give them.

It was a delicate dance that they were stepping, the two of them. It was growing more delicate by the month.

Sometimes Aragorn wondered how it would end.

"Not 'perhaps,'" Aragorn said. "I still have much to learn."

"So do all men alive," said Berenor. "I would worry more if you did not see it. Some boys reach the grand old age of sixteen and think they know everything, and declare that their elders have nothing worth teaching."

"Not boys of the Dúnedain." Aragorn smiled. "Or at least not any that I have seen."

"Ah, but we are more wise than lesser men." Berenor answered with a smile of his own. "And we train our boys well, and the wilderness and a thousand year trust are harsh teachers." His smile faded. "Do you know why I put myself forward as captain after your father's death?" he asked suddenly.

"Put yourself forward?" Aragorn said, surprised. "I thought…" _Thought you found it a burden, _he almost said, but did not. _Assumed it had been thrust upon you against your will. _

"Put myself forward, yes." Berenor looked at Aragorn, and there was something fierce in his expression that Aragorn could not read. "Yes, I sought this command that should be yours."

"Then you did so for a good reason," Aragorn said. "You knew my father well, and knew better than anyone what commands he would have given. You were the best…"

"No." Berenor stopped him with a sharply raised hand. "It was because I had no right to it. I was your father's oldest friend, but I am not of the line of kings."

"I… do not understand," Aragorn confessed.

"We did not know if you were still alive." Berenor's hand was clenched into a tight fist at his side. "I held you when you were two days old. Arathorn was so delighted with you, and I…" He let out a tight breath. "I didn't know if my closest friend's son was still alive. They wouldn't tell me." He closed his eyes; kept them closed for a while, and was slow to open them. "But we had to believe that you were. If one of your close kin had taken command, as they could have done, then it would have seemed…"

As if Arathorn's son was dead indeed, and the chieftaincy had passed by right to another line. Aragorn thought he understood.

"But if it was me," Berenor said, "nobody would ever think that it might be permanent. I was captain merely by necessity. I was never anything more. Nobody would ever see me as anything more."

_I think you underestimate yourself, _Aragorn thought, for he had seen how the young men looked up at Berenor, and how desperate they were for his sparing praise. But this was not the time to say it; perhaps there never would be a time. Perhaps he ought to assure Berenor that he had made the right decision, and that Aragorn did not resent him for it. Perhaps he ought to thank Berenor for his stewardship, but to do so would be to invite Berenor to surrender his office, and it was not yet time. Aragorn had learned so much in Rivendell, but about some things, he had learned nothing at all.

He had never given a command that had led a man to his death. He had never had to find the words that would inspire a man to risk death willingly. Aragorn was respected because of his lineage. Berenor, with no royal blood and no title, inspired loyalty just because of who he was.

Berenor let out a slow breath. He looked even more weary than before. Aragorn realised that he had misstepped. He should have thanked Berenor, after all, and assured him that he had acted correctly. It seemed remarkable to think that somebody as old and accomplished as Berenor might need a word or two of encouragement every now and then, and even more remarkable to think that Aragorn might be the only person who could give it.

He opened his mouth to speak those words, but hesitated still, wondering how to start. _Truly I am not ready, _he thought.

"But we should not be talking of such matters," Berenor said. "I apologise, Aragorn. It is easy to dwell on things when you are sitting so long alone, waiting to be found." He sheathed his sword, then stood up and stretched, wincing as he did so. "And easy for old muscles to stiffen up, too."

"I found you as quickly as I could," Aragorn said.

"Quicker than most," Berenor said. "It was barely an hour. Most take four hours at least, if they find me at all. Most fail, or get caught on the way. Speaking of which…" He stretched again, rolling stiffness out of his shoulders, then brought his hands to his mouth and made a harsh bird's cry.

Within a few minutes, two young Rangers emerged from the trees, summoned by the call. They were close friends, Hador and Garavion, and less than a year younger than Aragorn. They had played together as children, learned together as young men, and would probably journey together as adults, as long as their duties let them. _As long as I let them, _Aragorn thought. It still amazed him, sometimes, to remember that one day he would have the power of life and death over these people, merely because of who his father had been.

"He found you!" Hador said to Berenor, then turned to Aragorn. "How did you get past me? I was sure…"

"I thought I'd found your trail," said Garavion. "It went in quite the wrong direction. I imagine it wasn't yours at all." He turned back to his friend. "So he laid a false trail, then. Yes, you were right. No gloating, please."

Aragorn had trained with these two on and off for two years. He knew them barely at all. They were always full of tales of places he had never been, and old events that he had not seen. Sometimes, when they forgot themselves, they called him "lord." Other times they were too caught up in childhood memories to pay him much attention at all. As a newcomer, Aragorn did not presume to seek friendship from them. Because he was a stranger and their chieftain, they did not presume to offer it.

Together they walked back through the trees, heading for the camp, temporary base of a dozen Rangers out in the wilds. As they walked, Berenor lectured Hador and Garavion on tracking and the dangers of over-confidence. Aragorn he did not lecture at all. Aragorn suddenly wished fiercely that he was back at Rivendell and a child again, returning with his brothers from some long journey, listening intently as they told him how to improve.

By the time they reached the camp, Aragorn was walking a dozen paces ahead. He had not intended to. He had not noticed it happening.

The guard at the camp nodded respectfully as Aragorn reached it. Aragorn smiled, but said only the necessary words of greeting. Berenor, when he came, said more.

Aragorn returned to his shelter. He dug out a flask from his pack, and sipped from it for a while, then decided that he ought to seek somebody else out and offer to share it. But there was nobody there, just the guard, so Aragorn approached him again.

"I hear those lads failed to catch you," the guard said. He was called Thalon, Aragorn remembered. He had never dared to admit that at first he had found it hard to tell the Dúnedain apart.

"Indeed," Aragorn agreed. "But Berenor did. I thought I had him, but he knew I was there all along."

"He says he cheated." Thalon laughed, but his eyes were always focused on the world outside the camp. He might talk, but he never relaxed his vigilance. "He says it's the only way anyone can best you in Ranger hide-and-seek. I can well believe it. Your father was unbeatable, too."

"I… am not my father," Aragorn said.

Thalon looked at him, just a quick glance, before he turned to his task of watching. "Of course you aren't. Nobody thinks you are."

Aragorn had no idea what he meant by that. The Dúnedain had been overjoyed to learn that he was still alive, but had they been disappointed by him? He still knew more about elves than Men. He was young. He did not share the memories that shaped them. While they had suffered in the wilderness, he had lived in peace and joy in Rivendell.

Sometimes he felt like a child who had dressed himself in the robes of a king. People gave honour to the robes, but what did they feel about the child who wore them?

"Nobody thinks you should be, my lord," said Thalon.

Aragorn turned away. Berenor was hurrying across the camp, looking grim. "A patrol is missing," he said. "Heredil and Ranor are out with young Halbarad. They should have been back six hours ago."

"Many things can cause delays," Aragorn said, "and not all of them ill."

"That is true." Berenor nodded. "And six hours is not long, when they have been out for three days. But Halbarad is young, and Heredil and Ranor are both skilled and experienced. They would not willingly allow a delay when they have a boy in their care." He gave a quick flash of a mirthless smile. "We like to show off to the young ones, you see. If we say we will return at noon, then we return at noon, even if we have ridden through fire and war to get there."

"We could follow their trail," Aragorn said carefully.

Berenor nodded slowly, but there was a thick line between his eyes. "And a messenger has come in from the company currently in Fornost. There is trouble nearby, wild beasts and men still wilder, and they need more men. I need… I think I need to send as many people as possible down there to help them."

"I…" Aragorn moistened his lips. "I could go and look for the patrol by myself."

"You could," Berenor agreed. "You are the best tracker here."

It was always like that, and had been from the start. Except when they were training or caught up in battle, Berenor never issued any command to Aragorn, phrasing everything as suggestions and possibilities. Aragorn was just as careful to do the same.

"I think it would be wise to leave someone here," Berenor said. "Thalon, perhaps. A patrol of two is due in tomorrow afternoon. If Heredil's party has still not returned, they can ride out after you, unless you leave signs telling them not to."

"And if all is well," Aragorn said, "we could ride down together after you."

"To Fornost by the secret way," Berenor said, "and get news of us there."

Aragorn nodded. Berenor pressed his hand to Aragorn's shoulder, gripped it tight, then let it go. Aragorn was reminded suddenly of Elladan, the last person to touch him so. Both Elladan and Berenor were his teachers, but while Elladan would forever be older and wiser, Berenor was… what? Forever older and wiser, perhaps, but one day Aragorn would have to command him.

_One day, _he thought.

Aragorn wasted little time in leaving. He said no farewells, merely nodded once at Berenor as he passed him. He rode fast at first, although not so fast as to miss the signs. When he had first learned about the Rangers, he had imagined that they wandered in the wild on unknown paths, but he now knew that many of their routes were regular ones. They walked them sufficiently seldom to avoid a visible path being formed, but frequently enough for another Ranger to follow them easily, if he knew the land and its ways.

Aragorn did not know the land as well as those who had wandered it from childhood, of course, but he had ridden for years in similar terrain with his brothers, and he was quick to learn. He was quick to learn many things; he knew that. When it came to the practical skills of a Ranger, he had already surpassed many men twice his age.

_If this were all I was expected to be, _he thought, as he rode alone through the rising downland, _I could be content. _

He paused at a fallen tree, and saw the subtle sign that had been left by the patrol a few days before, showing that they had passed here, and all was well. He dismounted, and left a sign of his own.

The light began to fade as evening approached. Then the clouds parted just before the end of the day, and a bright sunset illuminated the hillside, showing the paths of crumpled grass left by animals and perhaps by men. He looked at the path that led back to the east, back to Rivendell, where his mother and his brothers were; where he knew who he was and knew his place; where Arwen was. Then he made himself turn his back, and looked south, to distant plains and distant hills, and roads that he knew he would one day travel. Then back to the north again, where his current duty lay.

He rode on. The hills grew steeper and more rugged. Just before the light faded completely, the undergrowth seemed to rise up around him, as if it was offering to hide him and lose him forever more. He stopped for the night, and spent hours wrapped in his blanket, watching the clouds scudding across the night's sky, never parting enough to show the stars.

_If this were all I was expected to be… _he thought. But even if it were, he could not be content, because then he would never have even the faintest, most slender hope of winning Arwen's hand.

But there was a comfort in riding alone. It was easy, and he knew how to do it. The wind rose in the night, and brought with it the chill of the coming winter. He fastened his cloak more tightly, and rode on. He found another sign, just where he had expected it. Apart from the signs, there was little indication of the patrol's passage. They were skilled Rangers, and knew how to hide from people who did not know how to look for them.

Birds sang in the trees, and a squirrel ran across his path, readying for winter. _If this were all… _he thought once more, but this time he stopped himself before he could finish the thought.

It was not all. Of course it was not all. His people had waited for him for eighteen years. Although grieving for his friend, Berenor had assumed a position he had no desire to hold, because he was determined that his people would never stop believing that Aragorn would come back to them. He was their reason for living the way they did, and for enduring what they endured.

_I wish I could be what they want me to be, _he thought, but in truth he did not even know what they wanted him to be, except alive.

The morning passed. A watery sunlight began to seep through the thinning clouds, but it did nothing to warm the air. He rode into a deep shadowed valley, and found the place where the patrol had left their horses and gone off on foot to investigate something. Aragorn could see nothing that might have excited their suspicion. Perhaps it had been a noise. It was hard to trace the way they had gone, but he managed it: a broken twig here, a smear of earth there. Halbarad, perhaps, for the boy was only seventeen, and this was his first time out on a proper patrol.

The trail led in a circle, back to the place where the horses had been. Smiling wryly, Aragorn carried on, and found the sign not far ahead: three Rangers, it said, and all was well.

_But it is not well, _he thought suddenly, and shivered.

It was late afternoon before he found it, the signs of horses hastily pulled off their course. He followed cautiously, sword in hand. Not far afterwards, he found the spot where the horses had been left, three of them tied up in a cluster of hazel trees. From the disturbance of the ground, he thought the horses had been there for some hours, but they were no longer there. Someone with heavy boots had come and released them and led them away. It was not someone who walked with the gait of a Ranger.

Sword in hand, Aragorn raced after those footprints for a dozen steps, when the voice of Elrohir spoke quite clearly in his imagination, urging him to stop. He had to be cautious. The boots had come for the horses many hours after the horses had been left. They were the end of a story, and he had to go back to the beginning.

He left his horse where the others had been tied, and held up a hand elf-style, bidding it to stand and wait. He found the flat stone a moment later, half trampled into the mud. There were hasty scratches on its reverse: the signs for 'ambush' and 'orcs.'

But where? And who had laid the ambush? Aragorn crouched down, and brushed his fingertips across the blades of grass, and brought his face to the ground, looking at the moss and the earth and the tree roots. The Rangers were good when their lives depended on it. He could find no sign of where they had gone after they had tied up their horses.

He decided to hazard a guess, based purely on his assessment of where Elladan and Elrohir would have gone, had they caught sight of a party of orcs while they had a young Estel in their charge. He judged rightly. Before he had walked for many minutes, it was unmistakeable. The Rangers had indeed set an ambush for the orcs, and it had been a successful one. He found where they had hidden themselves. He found where they had leaped out and struck their first blows.

Half a dozen orcs lay fallen on the ground. Aragorn bowed his head just for a moment, summoning the strength for it, and went from body to body. All were dead, and dead for several days. Crows had been about the corpses, and the smell was foul, although carried mercifully away from him by the wind. He saw no red blood on the ground, but there was too much disturbance to be sure of it.

Aragorn stood up, walked a few steps away from the battlefield, and pressed his hands to his face, then dragged them down, exhaling into his steepled fingers. So what had happened to the patrol afterwards? He could see no sign of anybody leaving the battlefield, neither orc nor Man.

He walked a few steps, then a few more. When he was away from the stench of the battlefield, he knelt down, and let out a long breath. Then he bowed even lower, and pressed his ear to the ground, spreading his hand, all five fingers pressing into the grass.

His senses roved out into the surrounding countryside. He heard the birds, and the quiet whispering of insects in the grass. He felt the movement of worms underground, and the badgers and foxes that were sleeping until darkness fell. The felt the wind moving across the world. He felt a stirring of old memories; echoes of a past when these hills were still inhabited by Men. He felt marching footsteps, a long long way away. Far to the south, he thought he felt Berenor riding away in disappointment, but perhaps that was just his own fears speaking. He cleared them from his mind, and closed his eyes.

And that was when he felt it: heard it or saw it or scented it, he was not quite sure. It was fear. It was desperation. It was a tortured gasp of pain.

Instinct was to run towards it, but Aragorn forced himself to approach cautiously, ready for a trap. It was no trap. The young Ranger was well concealed, tucked between boulders and half covered with old leaves, although he had long since kicked most of them away.

Aragorn looked round. Nothing, he thought. Nobody else. Sheathing his sword, he crouched down at Halbarad's side, and spoke his name.

"No…" Halbarad moaned, his head tossing weakly from side to side. His lips were dry and cracked, and he was very pale. "No. Can't…"

"Halbarad." Aragorn tried to touch him, but Halbarad cowered away, trying to curl in on himself, then moaning with the pain of it. "Halbarad," Aragorn tried again. "What happened?"

"Can't…" Halbarad moaned. "Got to…"

"Halbarad!" Aragorn had never before spoken with a snap of command, but he knew instinctively that this was what Halbarad needed.

Halbarad's eyes opened fully, and he stopped moving. "My lord. You came. I'm sorry…"

"You have nothing to apologise for," Aragorn assured him. "I'm the one who must apologise, for I need to ask you questions. But I have herbs with me." He touched the pouch at his belt, although he doubted Halbarad could see him do so. "I will do what I can for you."

"Let me… report first," said Halbarad, "because if you touch me, I don't think I can…" His face screwed up in pain, and he bit his lip. Just a young boy, barely seventeen, and very badly hurt. If Aragorn guessed right, he had been lying here alone for over two days.

"Then report," Aragorn said gently, but Halbarad said nothing, lost in his pain. Aragorn tried again, once more using that snap of command that he had heard Berenor use at times. "Report, Halbarad."

He could have hated himself for it, but Halbarad looked at him with something that might have been gratitude. "Heredil saw orcs, my lord. He has keen eyes. We dismounted; set an ambush. It worked, but I was wounded. They bound it up as best they could, to stop me leaving a trail, but then… then as we went back to the horses… Heredil saw them just in time. They hid me here and went off to fight them. They never came back. They never came back. I tried… I tried to stay awake like they told me, but…"

His voice faded. Aragorn spoke his name again, but Halbarad had fainted. _Or, rather, allowed himself to faint, _Aragorn realised, _because he has given his report. _It implied that Halbarad trusted him. It implied that Halbarad believed that Aragorn would know what to do with the information. It was no longer Halbarad's responsibility, because he had passed it on to… to another Ranger? To someone older?

To his captain?

Aragorn let out a breath. This was not the time to think about such things. Taking advantage of Halbarad's unconsciousness, he cleared away the last of the dead leaves, and located the wound. It was a nasty one, a deep slash across the hips from his lower ribs down to the outer thigh. It had been hastily bound when it was fresh, and Halbarad had clearly done what he could to tend it, but it was not enough. The flesh around the wound was badly inflamed, and the boy's skin was warm with fever. Aragorn doubted he would have survived many more hours alone.

Halbarad moaned when Aragorn touched the wound, but did not truly awaken. At first Aragorn soothed him quietly, but the more he soothed him, the more Halbarad moaned. Elrond had taught Aragorn that different people needed different treatment when they were in pain. Some needed gentleness, but gentleness encouraged others to slip away and give up the fight. Warriors sometimes responded better to firmness, because it reminded them that they were strong.

"Halbarad," Aragorn said, no longer trying to keep his voice gentle. "Rest now. All will be well."

"Yes." Halbarad's eyes fluttered open. "Because you're here."

Aragorn's hands froze, but he resumed again, tending the wound as best as he could. Halbarad lay still, perhaps conscious, perhaps not, but still breathing. His flask still held water, but only the last few drops. Aragorn used water from his own flask to clean the wound, and eased a few drops of water past Halbarad's dry lips. The rest of his food and water were back with his horse, and he had no wish to leave Halbarad until Halbarad was conscious enough to know that he was going.

The wound was freshly bandaged and suffused with herbs when Halbarad opened his eyes again. "My lord," he murmurs. "It feels better."

Aragorn doubted that it did. The wound was grave, and it had been untended for too long. He had been well trained in the healing arts, but if there was any magic in his blood, it came in the ability to counter the weapons of the Enemy, and not the mundane horrors of blood loss and infection.

"Of course it does," Halbarad murmured. "You're the better than anyone at healing, everyone knows that." He blinked, and seemed to recollect where he was. "But, my lord, the others… They didn't come back. I wanted to go after them, but I couldn't, I couldn't. My leg. I couldn't. I… fainted, I think. I couldn't hear anyone when I woke up… I tried to make it back to the horses, but an orc was taking the horses away. I should have stopped him. I should have followed him. I would have. I tried. I tried."

"I know you tried," Aragorn said. "You did everything you could."

And it was enough. Aragorn could have laughed at it, or wept at it, because Halbarad accepted his reassurance, as if it was coming from someone whose opinion really mattered.

"But you must leave me, lord." Halbarad shivered as he said it, and the shiver turned into a cry of pain. "Go after them. Find them. You must…" He moaned, and bit his lip. Aragorn offered him water. Most of it trickled down his chin. "Sorry," Halbarad said. "Can't… can't say 'must', not to you. But please…"

Halbarad's eyes slipped shut again, and this time he did not awaken. Aragorn watched him for a while, and tended him as well as he could, but evening was coming, and the wind was growing colder. He needed supplies if Halbarad was to be certain of surviving the night. No, he corrected himself, he needed supplies, and even with them, it was far from certain that Halbarad would survive.

"I will be back before long," he told Halbarad, although he doubted the boy could hear him. He left his flask at Halbarad's side, then, pausing to think for a while, found a flat stone and scratched onto it the signs for a swift return.

His horse was where he had left it. Before taking the reins, Aragorn pressed his ear to the ground, and once again sent his senses out into the world around him. He thought he could still hear the sound of Halbarad's pained breathing, either asleep and dreaming, or no longer asleep. There was no-one else moving within miles, neither Man nor orc. He risked riding his horse, then, and riding it openly.

He found the place where Heredil and Ranor had set their second ambush. Once again, they had killed many, but this time they had been overwhelmed. Red blood speckled the ground, but not enough for a killing wound. He saw clear signs of a struggle, and an orc with bruises on its throat and scratches on its face, killed with a knife in its chest.

_Prisoners, _Aragorn thought. _The orcs took them as prisoners, and wanted them alive. _It was unusual behaviour, and troubling. The last time he had seen them, Elladan and Elrohir had passed on a warning from their father. Rumours had come to him that orcs, and things yet fouler, were asking questions and seeking the Heir of Isildur, if still he lived. Had Heredil and Ranor been taken because of Aragorn?

He followed the tracks of the surviving orcs for a while, as they headed away north. The trail was already two days old. The single pair of boots came back later, overlaying the main trail. His guess was that somebody had remembered the horses, and an orc had been sent back for them, perhaps to take them for meat, or else to help them transport their prisoners. There were three horses, and only two prisoners, but whoever had come for the creatures had not searched for Halbarad, but had merely followed orders, and led the horses away.

Twilight was thickening around him. Aragorn looked into the north, but saw no lights, no smoke, no sign of anything alive, except for crows returning from the battlefield. He closed his eyes. _It has come, _he thought, _the moment when I must decide. _But it took little thought in the end, or at least this first step did.

He made his way back to Halbarad. It was almost fully dark, and he lit a fire, building around it a low wall of stones to shield it from the north. He had more herbs in his saddlebag, and he chose what he needed, and steeped them in hot water. He covered Halbarad with his blanket, tucking the edges around him, just as his own mother had done when he was a child.

Halbarad woke with a start. "I thought…!" he said, then, "Of course… Of course…" His face crumpled, and he began to cry.

"Halbarad." Aragorn spoke his name quietly, but without the gentleness that Halbarad seemed not to like.

Halbarad looked at him with naked relief on his face. "My lord. I thought…" Then he was struck with sudden horror. "But my lord, if you're here, you're not…"

"Peace, Halbarad," Aragorn said, and once again Halbarad obeyed, although he sobbed as he did so. Aragorn still thought of himself as someone who struggled to read the faces of Men, but Halbarad's feelings were unmistakable. He wanted Aragorn to save his comrades, but he dreaded being left to die alone. "Peace," Aragorn said. "It is my decision to make."

_It is my guilt to bear. _

He had never had to make a decision upon which the lives of men depended. Now that the time had come, it was… not easy – oh, never that – but less difficult than he had feared. If he left Halbarad alone for another night, Halbarad would almost certainly die. If he went after Heredil and Ranor… They had been captured two days ago. There were over a dozen surviving orcs, and they had been moving swiftly. He could gain on them if he went on horseback, but as he drew close to them, he would have to dismount and rely on stealth. There was little chance that he could slip in and rescue them without being seen, and if he was seen, there was even less chance that he could fight his way to their side.

One life, or two. The certainty that Halbarad needed him, against the possibility that he could save the other two.

"There should be three others coming after us, a day's ride behind me," he said at last, but perhaps he was trying to ease his own doubts, rather than Halbarad's. "I will look after you tonight, and in the morning, we will ride down to meet them."

"You will ride faster if you go without me, my lord," Halbarad said.

"Or perhaps my horse will trip in the darkness, and I would not get there at all," Aragorn said.

"But…" Halbarad said.

"No," said Aragorn, just that.

And Halbarad accepted it. Aragorn turned his face away for a moment, and when he looked back, nothing had changed. Halbarad accepted it. He accepted the medicine when Aragorn offered it, and he let Aragorn tend his wound, trusting him implicitly with his life. It was too new, too remarkable, too dreadful.

Halbarad slept in the end. Aragorn stayed awake all night, and tended to him. An animal screamed in the darkness. Halbarad stirred a little, and Aragorn thought of two lost Rangers. Perhaps, like Halbarad, they were hoping that their captain would come for them. He was not their captain in anything but name, but still…

_All will be well, _he had told Halbarad, and Halbarad had agreed, _because now you're here. _

Could it be…? "No," Aragorn murmured out loud. He shivered, and Halbarad whispered something in his sleep.

He thought of Heredil and Ranor in the hands of orcs. Orcs could hunt by smell, he knew, while in the darkness, Aragorn would be all but blind, robbed of his strongest sense. Perhaps he could go after them in the morning, after all. Hunting them at night was folly, but in the morning… Perhaps Halbarad would be stronger in the morning, and the other patrol would not be far behind.

At times, he had the gift of foresight. He wished he had foresight now. Would Halbarad die if he was left alone in the morning? Could Aragorn alone save Heredil and Ranor?

He laughed bitterly to himself. The decision had been less hard than he had feared merely because it was not yet irrevocable.

But Halbarad grew worse, despite Aragorn's tending. Morning came, and Aragorn knew that to leave him would almost certainly kill him. Merely to move him could lead to his death.

Aragorn stood up; stared into the north; pressed his hands to his face…

And stayed.

* * *

It had no easy ending.

The second patrol arrived not long after noon. Aragorn left Halbarad just long enough to bring them in faster, to urge them to hurry. They gathered round Halbarad, and they looked grave, but although they were all much older than Aragorn, and had lived in the wilds for so much longer, they had no easy answers. On the contrary, they all seemed to look to Aragorn to do what was needed.

_You're better than anyone at healing, everybody knows that, _Halbarad had said, but Aragorn had not, not really. Elladan was better, and Elrohir, and Elrond better than both. Aragorn had always assumed that these grim-faced Rangers were better, too.

Nobody took command. Nobody told Aragorn that he should stay with Halbarad, while they rode out after the orcs. Nobody commanded Aragorn to go with the rescue party, and offered to stay with Halbarad themselves.

"I think I need to stay with him," Aragorn told Thalon, careful to stand out of Halbarad's earshot. "I can do little more for his wound or his fever – only nature and his own strength can heal that now – but if he begins to drift towards death, I… have some skills that could call him back."

Thalon nodded, apparently accepting it. No, Aragorn realised, genuinely accepting it.

"But I have no desire to abandon Heredil and Ranor to the mercies of the orcs," Aragorn said. "They were taken three days ago, and there is little hope left now, but I will not abandon men while any hope remains."

"No," Thalon agreed.

"I would go with you," Aragorn said, "but Halbarad needs me. I…" He hesitated. Should he tell Thalon that he feared the Rangers had been captured because the orcs wanted to question them about the identity of the Heir of Isildur? Perhaps it would seem arrogant, as if he thought that everything had to be about him. "Be careful," was all he said. "There are over a dozen of them, I think, and they must be taking Heredil and Ranor somewhere, perhaps to a place where there are even more."

Thalon frowned. "This is the first time we have had any reports of orcs in these hills, and orcs don't usually take prisoners."

"No." Aragorn decided to tell him, after all. If there was any chance that his fears were correct, he had to ensure that his men were properly warned. "Elrond reports that orcs have been heard asking questions about the Heir of Isildur. This could be linked."

Thalon nodded, accepting this, too. "All the better that you stay behind with Halbarad, then,"

Aragorn's head snapped up. "That isn't why…"

"I know," Thalon said. "I know that, my lord. Our Chieftains have always risked themselves without a thought; that is why we love them. But because we love them, we wish they would keep themselves safe." He looked at Aragorn, more serious than Aragorn had ever seen him. "It is a hard thing to know that your people's whole reason for living could be wiped out with a single arrow."

_As indeed happened, _Aragorn thought, _or so you sometimes feared. _"And it is a hard thing for me, too," he said, stung into replying. _A hard thing to be your people's whole reason for living, when you are not sure if you are worthy of it._

Had his father ever been sure? He would ask his mother next time he saw her. Halbarad had looked at Aragorn with such faith. Perhaps it was just the desperate faith of a wounded boy, or perhaps Aragorn's performance in the last two years had looked different to those on the outside than it had seemed to himself.

But this was not the time for wondering.

"Be careful," Aragorn said. "Take no unnecessary risks. Bring them home if you can, but if they are beyond help, bring yourselves home. There are too few of us to throw lives away needlessly."

"Yes," Thalon said, pressing a hand to his chest in a salute. "Yes, my Chieftain." And he was smiling, genuinely smiling. Aragorn had no idea why.

* * *

The next night was bad, even worse than the one that preceded it. Aragorn slept when he could, because he had to; if he allowed himself to get too exhausted, he could kill Halbarad by accident, through his own weariness. He dreamed not just of Heredil and Ranor, but of Thalon and the others, too, all five of them dying, cursing their poor excuse for a Chieftain as they died.

But Halbarad lived through the night, and by noon he was stronger, able to stay awake for minutes at a time, and capable of taking a small amount of solid food. "Thank you," he started to say again and again, as he slipped back into sleep. "My lord. My lord."

"Don't," Aragorn begged him, but Halbarad did not hear him, or did not understand.

The patrol returned shortly before darkness fell, just three of them, with two dark lumps across their saddle bows. Aragorn knew they were bodies as soon as he saw them, but he told himself that they were not.

But they were. Of course they were. Dead for days, Thalon told him. Heredil had died of a slow wound, and had been cast aside barely hours after the original attack. Ranor had lasted longer. After marching for perhaps a day, the orcs had stopped and met up with an even larger party. From the evidence on the ground, the Rangers' best guess was that Ranor had contrived to escape, perhaps knowing that he would never get away, but hoping that he would be killed in the attempt. If that had been his intention, he had gained his wish.

Both dead, then, long before Aragorn had made his decision not to go after them. It should have made things better. It just made things worse.

What had Ranor been afraid of, Aragorn wondered. That he would be tortured? That he would betray Aragorn?

_I do not want such loyalty, _Aragorn thought, as he returned to the familiar comfort that was Halbarad's bedside. Halbarad looked up at him with faith and adoration in his eyes. _I do not want this, _Aragorn thought again, as he told Halbarad the facts clearly and without embellishment or false platitudes.

"But if you hadn't stayed with me…" Halbarad cried.

"Then they would still be dead." Aragorn said it in that firm voice that seemed to give Halbarad such comfort.

"But if I hadn't been wounded in the first place…"

"Then they would still be dead," Aragorn said, "and so would you."

And Halbarad was not dead, and that was good. Aragorn reminded himself of that fact repeatedly in the days that followed.

It was not enough, but for now, it had to be.

He would think about the rest of it later.


	3. Strangers on the Road

**III: Strangers on the Road**

_Five years after leaving Rivendell, Aragorn is on the cusp of assuming full command of the Dúnedain. Then an encounter in Bree leads him into deadly danger, and life will never be the same again._

* * *

The first opponent came in low, swinging with a clumsy, blood-stained sword. Aragorn parried it easily. He feinted right, then stepped in the other direction, avoiding the enemy's dirty knife. The second assailant came in from behind, but Aragorn already knew he was there, and knew where he was going to strike. Aragorn ducked, pivoted, and came up again, disarming the second attacker with a quick twist of his sword.

The first one was more difficult, still armed with sword and knife. Aragorn engaged him again, then managed to fight his way around until their positions were reversed, and he could keep an eye on both of his assailants, the one still armed, the other scrabbling to regain his sword.

They were Men. That was the worst of it. Aragorn was supposed to protect the world of Men, and one day, perhaps, to lead it.

"Yield!" he urged them. If they did not, he would be forced to kill them. "Yield!" he commanded, investing it with whatever authority he had learned in his short years of life.

The disarmed opponent reacted as if he had been slapped, and crouched in the grass, his hand not quite touching the hilt of his sword. Aragorn saw this in snatches, his attention by necessity focused on the man who still fought him.

"Yield!" he tried again, and the man stepped back, and stood there panting, his sword still up in a guard position. Aragorn had already wounded him, but only shallowly.

"I… yield," he gasped, and fell to his knees, his head sagging. He dropped his sword, and let his hand fall slack at his side. His muscles were still tense, though: shoulder, neck, and left arm, its fist clutching something in the long grass, something he wanted Aragorn to forget about.

Aragorn took a step forward. He heard Halbarad shout his name, sharp and urgent, but he already knew that the attack was coming. The man struck with the knife, but Aragorn was ready for it. Even so, the knife came faster than he had expected, and not where he had thought. He avoided it, though, and the next one, too. Then the man tried to grab his sword again, and Aragorn had to kill him in the end.

_A Man, _he thought, but he looked down at the blood-stained sword, and felt little regret. The blood on the sword was not fresh. Aragorn and the others had come too late to save the inhabitants of the small farm, arriving only in time to bury them and now to avenge them.

Berenor and Halbarad had won their own battles, and two more dead enemies lay on the ground. The man who had yielded had tried to crawl away, and Berenor had stopped him with a sword at the back of his neck.

"Is anyone wounded?" Aragorn asked.

"I am unscathed," Berenor said.

"As am I," said Halbarad. "Are you…?"

"I am well."

Did the blood come from the old man or the old woman? Aragorn rolled his dead man over, wary in case he was only shamming. He was not quite dead after all, but died as Aragorn touched him; Aragorn could almost fancy that he felt the moment that the man's spirit left him. "He is not one of the local folk," he said, but he had known that already, because you saw a man's face with vivid clarity when you were fighting him.

"Mine was darker and shorter than the Breelanders," Berenor said. "He might even have had orc blood in him, somewhere far back. But you, my lad…" He pressed his sword point against the back of his prisoner's neck, drawing a trickle of blood. "Perhaps you can answer our questions."

Berenor nodded a command to Halbarad, and the two of them wrestled their prisoner onto his back. He was very young, Aragorn saw, perhaps little more than sixteen. Unlike his dead companions, he had the look of a local boy. "Don't!" the boy begged, as Berenor loomed over him with his blood-drenched sword. "Please…!"

They were still dancing their precarious dance, Aragorn and Berenor. It was now five years since Aragorn had left Rivendell, and he had still not assumed the full mantle of Chieftancy. Berenor still issued commands, but more and more often, Aragorn issued commands, too. Sometimes, he saw the men he commanded glance briefly at Berenor, as if they wanted to ensure that Berenor, too, approved. But after a while, he came to realise that the same thing happened in reverse, when Berenor gave a command and Aragorn was near.

"No," Aragorn told Berenor now. "I think we should be… lenient."

He sheathed his sword, and unarmed, approached the prisoner. Berenor watched impassively. Halbarad looked unhappy. _Yes, _Aragorn thought, _I know you worry about my safety, but I trust the two of you to guard my back. _He tried to convey this with a glance, and Halbarad nodded, but still gripped his sword more tightly.

"Where do you come from?" Aragorn asked the prisoner. It took little questioning to get a full confession. He was a local boy, bored of pulling his sister's hair and stealing his father's beer and tormenting the dogs. He had run away in search of adventure, and had taken up with a passing band of strangers who had offered it to him. He swore that he had not killed, but neither had he forsaken them when the killing started. He swore that he had not robbed, but Aragorn knew that he was lying. But it was true that he was no fighter. He had barely known how to hold the sword that he had attacked Aragorn with, and it was plain that he was afraid.

"I am of a mind to let him go," Aragorn confessed to Berenor afterwards, as Halbarad stood guard over the boy. "To send him home and trust that he has learned his lesson."

"He did try to kill you," Berenor said, as if that was somehow a worse crime than the cold-blooded murder of several farmers.

Aragorn nodded his agreement. "And he is far from blameless, for all that he presented himself as an innocent bystander."

"He was quite convincing," Berenor said.

Aragorn shook his head. "The lie was plain in his eyes."

Berenor looked at him sharply, as if he was about to say something, but remained silent. Halbarad was guarding the prisoner closely, but kept looking at Aragorn, as if he was afraid that one of the dead men would rise up and kill him where he stood.

"But even so, I am inclined to give him a second chance," Aragorn said. "We are committed to protect these people, not to kill them. He is only a boy. Perhaps he will learn from this."

"Boys do learn," Berenor agreed, "and can grow quite quickly into good and capable men." He looked back at their prisoner, curled up on the ground. "But I am of a mind not to trust him too far. I would deliver him in person back to his home, and make sure he knows that we know where he lives."

"You should do that," Aragorn said. Halbarad was looking at him again. "Take Halbarad, too. I will… I think I should go to Bree, and drop a few words in the right ears to let it be known that the bandits will no longer be troubling them."

"Yes," said Berenor, with a quick nod, possibly accepting a command, and possibly giving one. "That would be well done."

Halbarad was not happy with the plan, of course. As they stripped the bandits of their stolen goods and disposed of the bodies, his feelings were vivid on his face. He wanted to go with Aragorn. He wanted to follow him and guard him and go wherever he went. But he was young, and desperately devoted, and he did not argue out loud. His eyes burned with misery as he nodded his acceptance of the command. Aragorn looked back just once after riding away alone. Halbarad was still looking at him, watching him go. Then Berenor said something, and Halbarad turned away.

And so, once again, Aragorn was journeying alone. Even after five years, he still felt it as the slow lifting of a weight from his shoulders. He saw the world more keenly. When he was out with others, he watched his surroundings avidly, looking for traps and dangers that might threaten his people. When alone, he saw those things that his brothers had shown him, on those rare journeys that had been purely for pleasure. He saw the changing colours of the leaves, just beginning to turn at the end of summer. He saw glossy blackbirds, and brown speckled butterflies, dancing on pink ragged flowers.

When night fell, he stopped, and slept beneath a bushy hazel tree, well hidden from the path. He did not dream, or if he did, he did not remember the dreams. He woke up before dawn, and resumed his journey as soon as there was enough light for his horse to walk safely. Had he been on foot, he thought, he might have travelled through the night.

He reached Bree just before dark on the second day. After seeing his horse safely stabled, he made his way to the common room. "Back again, then," said the landlord, not particularly friendly, but not hostile, either.

"A year since I last came," Aragorn said. "I'm surprised you remember me." He used his Breeland accent, pitched to sound local enough not to stand out, but not so local as to cause people to ask who his father was.

"I'm good at faces," Butterbur said, drawing him a pint of beer without waiting to be asked. "You have to be in this job. When they come in all smiles, like butter wouldn't melt in their mouth, you have to remember that they're the same ne'er-do-well you barred for life five years ago." He picked up a cloth, and began cleaning splashes from the dark wooden bar, moving the cloth in slow circles. "About five years ago you first came in, wasn't it? A green lad, overpaid for his beer?"

"Indeed," Aragorn agreed. "Maybe you owe me this one for free, then."

"Maybe I do," said Butterbur, but he held his hand out for money, and Aragorn paid him, although less than the full price. Butterbur looked as if he was about to argue, then subsided with a wry shrug. "Of course," said Butterbur, "I hadn't pegged you for one of them Rangers back then, or I wouldn't have tried it on the way I did."

"Why do you think I'm a Ranger now?" Aragorn asked, unable to stop himself.

Butterbur's cloth paused in the middle of a circle. He frowned at Aragorn, his head tilted thoughtfully to one side. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it." It was not said as a question.

Aragorn took his beer and headed to a quiet corner. After weeks spent drinking lukewarm water from an old leather flask, the beer was a welcome change. When the singing started up, his toe tapped along with its rhythm. But he chose a seat near an open window, where the smoky air was leavened by a pure scent of outdoors. As a Ranger, Aragorn spent even more time outdoors than he had spent as a child in Rivendell. Men were more familiar than they had been five years ago, but crowded rooms were not.

As he drank, he listened to the chatter around him. There was some nervous talk about the bandits who had attacked some outlying farms in the north, but as the drink started flowing, the concerns eased. Most of the faces were ones he recognised from earlier visits. The young men who five years ago had been teasing each other about girls, now spoke of wives at home, or even children. He watched two friends exchange insults, and saw how every insult was just another way of saying how comfortable they were with each other: men who, if their lives were different, would willingly die for each other on the front line of a war. It made him think of Hador and Garavion, and all those other Dúnedain who had close friendships, one with another.

Outside, the wind was rising, and the clouds of smoke in the common room swirled in the breeze. Aragorn pulled his cloak tighter around him, but his hood was pushed back, and he did not try to make himself unseen.

Butterbur scurried constantly, talking, laughing, scolding, lord of his domain. _I'm good at faces, _he had said. Aragorn watched him carefully. What an enemy he would make! No, he thought, perhaps not an enemy, but an enemy agent. Butterbur was astute, and he knew everything that was happening in his part of the world. He would make a good agent for the Dúnedain, too, although even as he thought this, Aragorn knew it would never become anything other than a thought. There was too much risk in it, risk for both sides.

Aragorn turned away. As he did so, he noticed another man who sat alone, nursing a drink that he seldom touched. He sat on the high-backed bench with studied casualness, and at times he joined in sparsely with the conversation on his right, and at other times dabbled in the shallows of the conversation to his left. But he was watching, Aragorn realised, knowing it with absolute certainly. No, not just watching. Waiting. Searching.

_For what?_ Aragorn thought. _For me? _He thought not, because Aragorn had entered openly, and made little attempt to hide. The man was armed, a long knife poorly concealed at his side, and his hands were scarred but strong. Nobody around him paid him any attention, or seemed to see anything suspicious about him. Five years ago, Aragorn realised, he doubted he would have noticed it himself. A watcher from the shadows came to recognise one of his own kind.

Butterbur came bustling up to his table, cradling a brimming jug in both arms. Aragorn put his hand over his tankard. "You don't catch me out that way a second time."

Butterbur shook his head in mock regret. "I know not to ask for your name. You Rangers never do tell us your names, just deflect questions as slippery as a fish. Ah, you think we don't notice, but we do. We'll have to come up with a nickname for you if you're going to be a regular visitor."

Aragorn smiled, but did not respond. "People were talking about bandit attacks earlier," he said instead. "I came in from the north, myself. Yesterday, I…" He paused; raised his tankard to his mouth, but put it down after only pretending to drink. "I came across some dead men by the side of the road. They weren't local, and they were armed to the teeth. No innocent travellers, they. I think… I'm wondering if they were your bandits, and they'd… squabbled over the loot and killed each other?"

"Could be." Butterbur nodded gravely. "Not local, you say? That'll be southerners, then. Everyone knows what southerners are like."

"What are they like?" Aragorn could not resist asking.

"Well… Um…" Butterbur frowned. "It's just a saying, you know? Nobody much lives down south, but it's wild lands, and that means people tell stories. But there are big cities way down south, too far away to be of any interest to us." Somebody called his name. He dismissed them with a wave. "Still, if the bandits are all dealt with, that's good to hear. I'll let people know, but the proof of the pudding's in the eating, as they say, and we'll have to wait and see." His eyes narrowed. "Quarrelled over loot, you say?"

Until Butterbur asked, Aragorn had not decided what to do about the slim pickings they had recovered from the bandits' packs. It was just a few hard-earned coins and old jewellery, poor quality, but cherished. Most of the owners were dead, but perhaps some owners could still be found. He had considered returning it in person, but that would have raised questions about how he had tracked the owners down. But Butterbur was… _astute, _Aragorn thought, _and sometimes a rascal, but a good man at heart, and honest where it counts. _

"I have it here," he said, and brought out his pack. "I have no idea who it belongs to, but perhaps…"

"I can ask around," Butterbur said, "and find out who's lost things. I'll do it subtle-like, of course – don't want to encourage this rabble to claim things they have no right to."

"Thank you." Aragorn nodded his gratitude.

Butterbur took the pack almost solemnly. Aragorn had no doubt that he would carry out the task honestly, and to the best of his ability. It was only afterwards that he realised that Butterbur, too, had shown no signs of doubting him. He had accepted without question that Aragorn was handing over everything he had found.

Aragorn wondered whether to ask Butterbur about the other watcher, but decided not to. Aragorn left before the common room closed, but the stranger did not appear to watch him go. Despite the breeze, it was a fine night, and Aragorn had decided to sleep outside, not far from the town. He covered his tracks, and laid a false trail, but nobody followed him, and there were no ambushes in the night.

When morning came, he laughed a little at himself. _Not everything is about you, Estel, _he imagined Elladan saying, clapping him on the back.

He returned to Bree to collect his horse. As he did so, he saw the stranger again. His face was clearer in the grey light of morning. He did not look quite like the locals, but not so different as to arouse attention. It was possible that he had something of the look of the bandit Aragorn had killed, but perhaps that was just Aragorn's imagination. In truth, he knew little about Men outside the north. He had read about Rohan and Gondor and Esgaroth, but had never met anyone from there, and could not tell them by sight.

The stranger was still watching. He was hiding it well, but Aragorn knew the signs; one outsider who clung to the shadows could recognise another, it seemed. Aragorn sat down on a mounting block outside the stable, and pretended to tend to his horse's tack. The stranger gave no sign of noticing him.

At length the stranger stiffened, his eyes narrowing. Aragorn counted quietly to ten, then glanced casually in the direction of the stranger's gaze. An old man had emerged from the inn, and had paused in the yard to look up at the bleak sky, as he wrapped his threadbare grey robes closer around his body. His face was worn with age, and he walked slowly, leaning on a staff.

Aragorn bent to his pretended task, busy with the leather straps. The old man walked past him; with his peripheral vision, Aragorn saw how dirty the hem of his robes was, and how well-worn were his boots. The old man saddled his own horse, dismissing the help of the ostler's boy, but tossing him a copper coin even so.

The stranger was watching the stable now, but far less openly than before. He was afraid that the old man would notice him, Aragorn realised, but until the old man had appeared, the stranger had felt no fear. It had not apparently crossed his mind that anyone else would be interested in him.

What was happening here? Instinct was to paint the old man as the innocent. The stranger was a robber who was lying in wait for his prey, and who doubtless planned to follow him and attack him when he was alone in the wilds. But Aragorn knew that things were not always as they seemed. An old man's robes could be a disguise for villainy. Sometimes people who watched from the shadows did so with the best of intentions. Nobody knew that better than a Ranger of the North.

The old man mounted his horse, climbing more easily into the saddle than his age would suggest. He did not glance at Aragorn as he rode past him, and neither did Aragorn glance at him, although he watched him even so. The old man left Bree, heading west. The stranger ducked out of sight as the old man left the stable, but reappeared as soon as the man was past him. He watched him go, then hurried away. Not long later, Aragorn saw a dark bird rise up from behind the bulk of the inn's main building, wheel round once, and head south.

Aragorn watched, and waited, and thought. He waited for the stranger to reappear, but he never did. Fallen leaves swirled in the yard. The air was cold, and the horizon in the west could not be seen.

Not everything was as it seemed, Aragorn knew, but there was something here that he liked not at all. Perhaps the old man was in danger, or perhaps the old man was an enemy masquerading as an innocent. Either way, if Aragorn's bloodline was to mean anything at all, he could not sit idly by and let events unfold. He would follow the old man, he decided, and then… and then he would see what he would see.

He had expected the old man to stick to the road, but his trail left the road as soon as Bree was out of sight, and headed slightly south, up into the hills. Aragorn began to follow it, then returned to the road, struck by a sudden suspicion. Barely half a mile later, a second trail came in fast from the north, paused for a moment, then headed into those same hills. Aragorn dismounted, and touched the trails with his fingers, judging the size of the hoof prints and the size of the horses. The first trail was the old man's, Aragorn decided. The second was the stranger's, who had left Bree by the east gate, then doubled back in a wide loop to join the westward road. Perhaps he had then seen the old man away in the distance, and had set off after him, following him cross-country.

Aragorn decided to follow the old man's trail. It was easy at first, for the old man had made no attempt to cover his tracks. There were places where he had let his horse ride through a patch of mud, when shifting just a yard to the side would have taken him through dry ground, and left no trail. Aragorn chose the dry ground with barely a thought, as he always did. Either the old man was an innocent who had never had to pass unseen, _or he wants to be followed, _Aragorn thought, _or at least cares not if he is._

He proceeded more cautiously after that. The land rose, and the clouds came down to meet it, wrapping the world in mist. No birds sang. He focused on the trail. Wisps of thought rose up in his mind – thoughts of Halbarad's devotion, of the situation with Berenor, of the fate that he was bound to – but always they drifted away again. He saw a blade of grass bent just so. He saw a hoof print in mud. He saw movement away to the right, but it was just the wind stirring the mist. Then the mist grew thicker, thick enough to be called fog. Bending low over his horse's neck, he concentrated on the trail: mud, grass, a scuffed stone.

He caught no trace of the stranger's trail. Then, between one step and the next, he lost the old man's, too.

Aragorn dismounted. It was… He frowned, suddenly realising the truth. It had to be mid-afternoon by now, although there was no sun to tell him to time. He had followed the trail for hours, so intent on it that he had lost all awareness of anything else.

His hand went to his sword hilt, and he shivered with sudden cold. Strange mounds rose up all around him.

_I am on the Barrow Downs, _he realised. They were terrified of the Barrow Downs in Bree, and told tales of travellers lost forever. Elrond's tales were worse. And yet the old man had come here. Did he know? _No, _thought Aragorn, _I have to…_

Had to what? Warn him? Save him?

Something tugged at his cloak. _Just the wind, _he told himself. He drew his sword fully. The blade was dull in the fog, even more dull than it should have been, as if something was leeching all light from the world.

"Are you there?" he tried to shout, but the fog took his voice, and turned it into a frail and fragile thing, nothing against the vastness that was the world. He tried again. "Are you there?" he shouted.

He reached for the warm solidity of his horse, but his horse was gone, gone away completely, although he had not heard it leave. Something whispered in the grey fog. He saw a swirl of something, perhaps a grey robe, a thin pale hand, a lined old face.

A third time, then. He called out once more. "Are you there?"

And answer came. "I am here," was the reply, and he knew it was not the old man, and not the stranger, and nothing human, nothing alive. It was as intimate as a caress. It spoke though blood and bone. It was a long, clawed finger reaching into his head. It was a fist that closed around his heart, and left nothing but dust and ashes. It was as small as a pin prick. It was as large as the world.

"I am here."

_Who are you? _he tried to ask, but his tongue clove to his mouth, and all was dry. He tried to moisten his lips, but they felt as cold as old bones. Other words tried to shape themselves. _And I come, _he wanted to say. _I come to you._

He gripped his sword. His arm was trembling, as if his sword was as heavy as the rock at the heart of a mountain. Then something impossibly cold gripped his shoulder, and his whole arm turned to ice. He thought he dropped his sword; he could not feel it leaving his frozen hand, but dimly he heard it fall into the grass.

"No," he tried to whisper, but he could make no sound. He was driven down, forced down by whatever it was that held him trapped, until he lay on his back on the grass, his sword useless beneath him. The last memory of light fled from the mist, turning it into night. Something immensely tall loomed above him, with two specks of cold light that could have been eyes, or could have been merciless, distant stars.

Memories rose with its touch. He saw men standing back to back, fighting overwhelming evil, and losing because they had no true lord. He saw men slaughtered by orcs, and thought that he knew their faces. Their eyes were open and staring, staring at him, full of reproach. A spear lanced through him. He saw a man like himself, but with a helm and a rich cloak, dragged into the ground, screaming. He saw the deaths of men with faces that he knew, but as soon as he tried to put names to them, he realised that he did not know them at all.

_I do not know them, _he thought, small and sorrowing in the darkness. He had no true friends. He had spent his childhood away from his own people. All unprepared, he had returned to them, but he was Chieftain only because his father had been, and not because of his worth.

"Yes, yes," urged the voice in the mist. "Not because of your worth."

He closed his eyes, and the memories only grew stronger. _We died, _they wailed. He saw them lost in cold tombs below the earth, fading away to dust, abandoned by their lord. _We are your kin,_ they told him, _and your place is with us. If you cannot save us, then you must follow us down into the darkness. _

He nodded. His sword was cold against his back. His hand grasped, and closed on earth.

The same earth covered the Dúnedain, the men he could not save. _We died because you did not come, and when you came, you were not worthy. _It was Heredil and Ranor, bereft and forlorn. It was Halbarad…

_No, not Halbarad. _It was a struggle to shape even such a thought. Not Halbarad, because Halbarad lived. Not Heredil and Ranor, because there had never been anything he could do for them.

"No," he whispered. It was just a breath, just air forced past dry lips. He closed his hand into a fist, forcing earth between his fingers, driving his fingertips into his palms. "No." This time he managed sound. "Elbereth," he whispered, and he thought of light, and stars, and the music of Rivendell. He thought of flowers and bird song, and his mother and Elrond, and Arwen, and Arwen, and Arwen.

"You will not have me," he vowed. The thing holding his shoulder loosened its grip, and the darkness lessened. He tried again, raising his head from the ground. "You will not have me."

Something shrieked, and the sound was an agony that ripped through his skull and made him screw his eyes shut, but even so, he could see a sheeting whiteness through his eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on his back on the grass, and a tall figure was looking down on him. He blinked, and saw it was the old man, grey against the paling sky.

"Well," the old man said, "I thought I had come here not a moment too soon. But it seems as if I underestimated you. Perhaps I should have just stood back and watched."

"You came." His tongue felt heavy, and his words clumsy. "Has it gone?"

"The Barrow Wight? Yes. And will not come back for a while, I think. Still, it would be well for us not to linger."

"Barrow Wight," Aragorn echoed. Of course. Of course that was what it was. He should have known. Elrond had warned him. "It... wanted me." He was speaking almost to himself. It helped him, he thought, the act of shaping words, of hearing normal sound. "I saw things. Memories, they seemed like, but there were not true, I think. Or they were true, but…" He frowned. "They were true a long time ago," he said slowly, realising it.

"Many men have been ensnared over the centuries," said the old man. "The Barrow Wights are evil spirits that have taken up residence in the burial mounds of these ancient kings, and live in their relics and their bones. But many men lie there now who did not lie there when the mounds were first sealed. The memories of all those who have been taken still live, it is said, in the touch of the ones that slew them."

Aragorn pushed himself to his feet, and found he could stand without difficulty, although his arm was still a little numb. The things he had seen and heard still tugged faintly at him mind, but the old man's steady voice was like a light, keeping him from heeding them too much.

"Mount your horse," the old man said. "We must ride from here as soon as we can. We will not be fully safe until we are down from the hills."

"My horse…" Aragorn echoed. "It ran…" But then he saw it through the mist, a dark shape and a nervous one. Still feeling half asleep, he stumbled towards it, and soothed it with soft words and a firm touch. It helped a little, but not much. He longed suddenly for sunlight, but the day had been misty from the start, and night, true night, was not too many hours away.

The old man was already mounted. Aragorn looked at his own hands on his horse's dark flank. He was alive. He was free. He pressed his brow to the horse's neck, and felt its warmth and the rhythm of its breathing. His own breathing was rapid, fluttering in his chest as if he was shivering at his very core. His hand tightened on the saddle bow. He thought of open meadows and whipping trees and a fierce fresh wind that brought with it the scent of flowers.

The old man was watching him, his eyebrows arched in mild question, although beneath them his eyes were keen. _I should go with him, _Aragorn thought. Until he thought it, he had not realised how strongly he had been tempted to mount his horse and gallop away alone. _I cannot leave a frail old man alone in a place like this, _Aragorn told himself. He knew it as a fiction, but it was enough to give him the strength to mount calmly, and to follow.

They rode in silence. The mist began to thin, but the old man waited until it was completely faded before calling a halt. "Now," he said, and his voice was different suddenly, as if layers of artifice had been peeled away to reveal the true steel that lay beneath it. "Who are you, and why were you following me?"

Aragorn knew enough not to reveal his true name. Instead of lying, he avoided the question altogether. "I saw you ahead of me and thought you might need help. It can be dangerous for an old man to travel alone in these hills."

"Not good enough," said the old man. "You were in Bree. It was not by chance that your path was the same was mine."

Nothing could be gained by lying. Aragorn kept his head high, and managed to meet the man's gaze, and not falter. "It was not. Someone was watching you in Bree, and sent a messenger bird as soon as you had left. I thought you might need protection."

"And who are you, you takes it upon himself to protect passing strangers?" The voice sounded amused, but Aragorn thought he heard a serious note beneath it, as if the old man had suddenly stumbled upon something that intrigued him.

"An arrogant young fool," Aragorn said, "who ended up needing rescuing himself."

"Ah, but you were fighting well yourself," the old man said, "and I have seldom seen a call so strong as the one you faced, not seen a call so strongly resisted. I wonder why that was."

Aragorn said nothing. He could still feel it, if he let himself. His shoulder was cold, and the echo of the call was still there in his bones. He would have to think about it soon, but not yet, not so soon and so near.

"Come," the old man said. "Enough of this fencing in the dark. We both have secrets, so let us trust one another. You were called because you are kin to some of those who lie in the chambers below the earth. The call reaches through blood and bone."

"How do you know all this?" Aragorn asked, but he had known part of the truth ever since the Barrow Downs. "You are no old man," he said. "You are not what you seem."

"And neither are you," the old man replied. "You are Númenorean; that much is plain. You hid it well in Bree, but not well enough. The strength of your mind equals the potency of your blood, or you would have been overcome ere I came to you. The same could be said of any of the Dúnedain, but I think you are more than that. I think you are one I have heard of oft in Rivendell, more since you left it than when you were there, for Elrond keeps his secrets well, even from one such as me."

"Mithrandir!" Aragorn gasped, and wondered suddenly how he could ever have thought it was anyone else. He had been ten years old when a fantastical party of twelve dwarves and one halfling had come to Imladris, in the company of Mithrandir. He had longed to be able to attend the feast that welcomed them, but had been kept away. At the time, he had thought he had been kept away because he was not trusted to behave in company, but he now realised that he was kept away from strangers in order to protect him from the outside world.

"In these lands, I am Gandalf," Mithrandir said, with a smile. "And you are Estel, though I will not say your true name in a place such as this. Who knows what tales are whispered by the Barrow Wights, and what ears hear them? Come, let us away."

The sun came out as they travelled, although it was weak, filtered through the thin mist that still clung to the lower half of the sky. Aragorn twisted in the saddle to look back at the Barrow Downs, and saw a tall shape rising up from the highest hill, perhaps a mighty standing stone, or perhaps something else.

"My forefathers were not buried there," he found himself saying. It took little effort to remember the visions he had seen. Forgetting them would be far harder, he knew.

"But their cousins were," Gandalf said, "and their nephews and their kin. The blood of Númenor is strong, and breeds true. You were called strongly because of who you are. Because of who you are, you had the strength to prevail."

Aragorn had not meant to say anything, but the sun was shining, and he was alive, and Gandalf owed no allegiance to him, and had no expectations. "Because of my blood," he said bitterly. "Is that all there is?"

"Is it?" Gandalf said, no answer at all, not even a question that made sense.

The birds were singing again; Aragorn noticed that with some quiet, distant part of his mind. "Estel, they called me," he said. "I am expected to carry the hope of an entire people. I was their Chieftain before I knew what that word meant. I could have grown up an idiot, or indolent, or cruel, and still they would look to me to lead. So I say again: is blood all there is?"

Gandalf was silent for a very long time. Aragorn looked at those mounds which held the bones of long-dead kings who had fought, and failed, and died. "Yes," Gandalf said.

Aragorn's head snapped round. He had expected… what? Platitudes? Comfort? Instead he was given… truth? _No, _he thought. _Not truth. No. _

"Yes," Gandalf said quietly, "but only if you make it so. The Barrow Wight called so strongly to you because of your blood. It was not blood that caused you to resist the call, and resist it well. Because of who you are, I said. It has more than one meaning."

Aragorn opened his mouth to say more, then closed his mouth again. They rode on in silence for a while, then spoke about inconsequential things: Gandalf's travels, the food in Rivendell, stories told by the halflings in the Shire. By the time the sun was setting, Aragorn could no longer see the Barrow Downs, dark against the fading gold.

Gandalf started a fire, and they sat beside it, and shared the food from their packs. When their meal was over, Gandalf pulled out a long pipe, and started to smoke. "Ah," he chuckled, when he saw Aragorn watching. "I can see you disapprove."

"The Breelanders smoke," Aragorn said, avoiding the need to answer.

Gandalf exhaled slowly, blowing out a perfect ring of aromatic smoke. "And you consider it a filthy habit." He grinned, looking more like a mischievous boy than the ageless power that he truly was. "This is Longbottom Leaf, and as any hobbit will tell you, it is a leaf fit for a king." He rummaged through his pack and pulled out a second pipe. "Try it. You might be pleasantly surprised."

Aragorn doubted it, but he took the pipe when it was offered. He inhaled cautiously, and managed to keep himself from coughing, but only just. It was far from pleasant, but he did not know Gandalf well enough to say so. "Who was watching you, do you think?" he asked instead.

Gandalf produced another ring of smoke. "I have… enemies," he said, at last. "There are times when I travel on secret roads and do not wish to be seen, but this is not one of them. I am travelling openly, visiting an old friend. They will find little to reward the effort of watching me, I think."

Which was no answer at all, of course, but Aragorn realised that he did not mind. He tried the pipe a second time. It was no better. "What happened to the man who was following you?" A cold breath of wind touched the back of his neck, and he tugged his cloak around his body. "I do not like to think of him lost on the Barrow Downs."

"He lost my trail," Gandalf said. "I expect he has returned to Bree, saddle sore and frustrated, leaving me free to ride on tomorrow, unmolested."

And leaving Aragorn free to return back to his people, back to this life that he was living. He let out a slow breath, and watched the shapes and shadows that danced in the flames. It served nothing to lie to himself. He had chosen to ride alone to Bree because even now, he was not fully comfortable with his own people. Perhaps, in part, he had chosen to follow Gandalf because it had offered him another day on the road, away from them.

But while it was necessary to be truthful with yourself, there was a limit to how much truth you could take. "Where are you going?" he asked Gandalf instead, as he drew in another lungful of aromatic smoke.

"The Shire," said Gandalf, with a smile, "where hobbits dwell. I have travelled in many lands, and have seen great towers and rivers and mountains, but the Shire remains very dear to me. Have you been to the Shire, Aragorn? You must come with me one day. It needs to be seen, I think. It is easy for those born to greatness to dismiss the worth of little people, and the value of the life they live. Everyone who claims to defend Middle Earth from evil should see the Shire, to see what it is that they are truly protecting."

"I would like that," Aragorn said. "I, too, would like to travel far."

He left it at that, but he could have said so much more. He was bound to his people, held to a place where people looked to him to make decisions and where men would die for him. He had been with the Dúnedain for five years now, and the time was very close now when Berenor would step down, and Aragorn would be chieftain in fact as well as in name. Halbarad already worshipped him, and was sweeping some of the other young men along with him. In some ways, such worship was worse than the contempt he had feared to see when he had first arrived.

"The Enemy is growing in strength," Gandalf said. "The day long expected is drawing close. The fate of Middle Earth will rest on a knife edge. In that time, the Heir of Isildur will need to be more than the lord of a hidden people in the north. Men will have to come together, to forget all thought of race and kin. They will need a leader, one who has knowledge of the ways of all Men, who knows more than just the hidden pathways of Eriador."

Aragorn watched the flames, as if the future could be seen amongst its flickering shapes. "You are telling me to leave." Perhaps it was a question, and perhaps not.

Gandalf shook his head.

Aragorn looked at him. "Did my father leave the north? Did his father, or his father, or his father before him?"

"I believe they did not." Gandalf's eyes gleamed in the firelight. A branch cracked in the flames, and smoke swirled in the breeze.

Aragorn shook his head slowly from side to side. Elrond had told him, of course. According to Elrond, Aragorn would either rise higher than any of his forefathers since the time of Elendil, or live to see the end come for his people. If he failed at the test, his people would fall.

"Are you telling me to leave?" This time it was a question, and fervently meant.

Gandalf puffed at his pipe, and shook his head. "I am merely saying that good might come from it. It is up to you to find it."

There were so many stories. There were tales of the white towers of Gondor, where the white tree bloomed in the courtyard of kings. There was Pelargir by the Anduin, and great Osgiliath straddling its shores. There were mountains and plains and the open sea. There were great deserts far away, where no man had travelled and come back alive. There were men who did not know him, and expected even less. There were elves who had never heard of him. There was information to be obtained, and reports to be brought back to those who knew what to do with them.

_Is blood all these is?_ he has asked Gandalf, and Gandalf had said yes, yes, if Aragorn chose to make it that way. If war was to come in his lifetime, then he had to be ready for it. He had to know his quality. The Dúnedain had no choice but to follow him, because their entire way of life was based around loyalty to his blood line, and without it, they had nothing at all. Elrond had said that Aragorn would be tested, but it was no true test to assume the leadership of a people who had no choice but to follow him. He had to test himself in places that did not know his name or his lineage.

He had to understand those Men. Through them, perhaps, he would come to understand himself.

Aragorn closed his eyes. The flames were still dancing when he opened them, but this time he saw no distant pictures. He could have said so many other things, but, "The Dúnedain may not take it well," was all he said.

"They will if you tell it well," Gandalf said. "They have known from the start that your fate is different from that of your fathers. They will wait for you."

Aragorn put the pipe to his mouth, drew in another lungful, then let it out with a slow sigh. He felt very young all of a sudden: not the leader of armies in some distant war that might never come, but a young man just five years away from his mother's care. "Will they think I'm running away, Gandalf?"

"What matters is what you think," Gandalf replied.

"No," Aragorn protested. "They matter."

"Yes," said Gandalf. "Yes, they do. But what can any of us do, whether king or wizard, or hobbit or stable lad, but what feels right to us at the time?

_But I don't know what feels right, _Aragorn thought, but perhaps even that was untrue. Travelling south felt right for so many reasons. He was almost certain that those reasons were not selfish ones.

"Now, my lad," Gandalf said, with a sigh. "I'm an old man, and need my sleep. Shall we stop, do you think?"

Aragorn stretched himself out on his back, and covered himself with his cloak. The memory of the Barrow Downs was still there, but he realised that his heart felt lighter than it had felt for five years. Perhaps he would travel south, and perhaps he would not. Perhaps he would leave within weeks, or perhaps not for many years. But whatever happened, the future held possibilities. It held free choice. For the first time in his life, he would live without the burden of a name.

"But you are no old man," he said, with a chuckle. "I am not fooled by the act."

"And neither am I by yours, my friend," came the voice from the darkness, betraying nothing.


	4. The Land of Shadow

**IV: The Land of Shadow**

_Aragorn has spent many years travelling, but even when he lives as a nameless stranger, he cannot escape his destiny. Now he is about to embark on the most dangerous journey he has yet undertaken, a journey that could change his life forever, or even end it._

* * *

**Note**: This chapter is set many years after the previous ones, at the end of Aragorn's time in Gondor. Aragorn's "great errantries" are fascinating, but, sadly, do not belong in this story, since the focus of this story is Aragorn's relationship with the Dúnedain of the north, and his journey towards accepting his destiny there.

* * *

He was close to the end now. Thorongil was down on one knee, his hands half numb from the savage blows that had hammered against his sword. His eyes were dazzled by flame. When he blinked, he saw strange shapes dancing against the darkness: the after-image of his enemy silhouetted against the blazing fires.

People were shouting behind him, but they were engaged in their own battles and were too far away to aid him. His enemy was reeling too, Thorongil knew, and wounded in a dozen places. It had to be now. His chest heaving, his lungs burning from smoke and exhaustion, Thorongil rose to his feet, and intercepted his enemy's sword before it could come down for a killing blow. Even so, it drove him back to the ground, but he held. Their swords locked. Their eyes met.

It was over not long after that. "May you burn," gasped the Captain of the Haven, as he fell. He did not relinquish his two-handed grip on his sword, not even to clutch his gaping death wound. He still gripped it even as his head came to rest on the cobbles.

Panting and near spent, Thorongil stepped away, out of the reach of that sword. He kept his grip on his own weapon, but he spared one hand to scrape away the worst of the sweat and soot from his face. The hand came back smeared with blood. He had no idea whose blood it was. He had no idea if he was hurt, or if so, how badly.

"Burn," whispered the Captain of the Haven, in a language that he could not know that Thorongil understood. Then, switching languages, he said, as if the words were being ripped out of him against his will: "Who are you?"

Thorongil did not wish to answer with a lie. The Captain's eyes were open and gazing at him, but Thorongil was too far away to read their expression. He edged forward, but there was nothing in those eyes but the reflection of a blazing fleet, hiding anything that lay inside.

"My curse upon you," said the Captain's lips, as he died alone and unanswered.

The man's strong hand grew slack around his sword hilt, but Thorongil still kept his distance. "Just a captain of Gondor," he said quietly, his words taken by the roaring of the flames around him.

Someone shouted urgently behind him: a question, he thought. Thorongil turned, and raised his sword in acknowledgement. Weariness could come later. Reflection could come later. The Corsair Captain had fallen, but the battle was far from over.

He closed his eyes just for a moment, then opened them again. Turning a full circle, he saw the blazing warehouses, the burning ships, the dark shapes that struggled in vain to get the fires under control.

It was time to withdraw. Thorongil had come here not for conquest, but to destroy the ability of Umbar to make war from the sea. They had slipped in at night, a small force, far too small for a daylight war. Some of the weapons they had been forced to use were not entirely honourable ones: a knife to the throat of a watchman who was about to call out a warning; fires set in the dark, while men lay sleeping up above. By the time the men of the ships and the quayside had awakened, it was already too late for half of their fleet. Thorongil's men had fought as he had trained them, holding off the first waves of resistance, and now it was too late for much of remaining fleet, too. Some would survive, perhaps, but very few.

"Captain?" he heard, and he turned to see Hithon, the nearest he had in Minas Tirith, or anywhere, to a right-hand man.

"It is time," Thorongil said. After many years spent as a captain in many wars and many places, he knew how to make his voice carry over the din of battle. He shouted out the pre-arranged code-word, the one that told his men to work their way subtly, discreetly, back to the boats that had allowed them to bring fire and death to Umbar in the night.

They obeyed. They were hand-picked men; of course they obeyed him.

_It is time, _Aragorn thought. _It is time for me to leave them._

But he would remain Thorongil for just a little while longer, until he had brought as many men as possible out of the flames. Joining his men, he fought alongside them, helping to secure their retreat. Once he saved a man from a death that had seemed unavoidable, pushing the man to the ground, and striking with a blow that Elrohir had taught him so long ago, when Thorongil had borne a different name. The man, Duinor, looked at him with gratitude, but Thorongil shook his head, for there was work to be done.

With a mighty roar, a warehouse collapsed. A dozen ships still had their masts, the rigging and furled sails blazing like garish monuments in the night. Thorongil's men had lingered too long, or almost too long. The flames of the quayside had roused the men from the city inland. Thorongil saw lights blazing, and heard trumpets sounding. Most of the newcomers would be used to desperately fight the fires and stop them from spreading still further. Enough would be sent to wreak vengeance on the Gondorians, and repay death with death. Thorongil's men would not be allowed to depart easily.

"Now," he said, meeting Hithon's eyes across the fray. Hithon returned the look for longer than was necessary, but then he nodded.

It was a perilous thing, the plan Thorongil had come up with for their safe withdrawal. The men of Gondor fought fiercely, but it must have seemed to the Corsairs that they had miscalculated, for they allowed themselves to be driven into a place where the flames had been reduced to embers, and the smoke swelled thickly, making it hard to see. There was nothing beyond there but darkness, and the Corsairs were on home terrain.

A Corsair came too close. Thorongil killed him, then turned the move into a roll, using the opportunity to grab a lungful of the clearer air at ground level. "Withdraw!" he shouted; enough of the Corsairs would understand the language, he knew. "Back to the beach!"

He was wearing no badge of rank, but his fight against the Captain of the Quays had been seen, and when he shouted, the enemy knew him. He raised his sword like a crest marking him, then leapt swiftly away before the arrows came, slamming into the charred beam behind him.

Eyes that were accustomed to fire were all but blind in a place of ash and embers. Hiding in the darkness, Hithon's men stirred up smoke. When it thinned again, the Corsairs saw the captain who had killed their own captain, his sword still held aloft. They followed him as he ran into the darkness. There, lit faintly by the blaze of their devastated fleet, they saw the dark shape of a Gondorian ship anchored out in the bay.

It fell out much as Thorongil had predicted. The Corsairs fell into the trap. They now thought they knew where the Gondorian ships were anchored, and where they had landed in their small boats. They thought they knew the terrain better than the invaders, not knowing that Thorongil had scouted it out alone, not once but several times. As Thorongil led his decoy force in a clumsy, circuitous route, a group of Corsairs ran by a straighter route to lie in ambush on the shingle beach. As Hithon led the bulk of the force unseen along the shoreline, a group of their enemies returned to the quay to gather any boats that survived, and take them to destroy the Gondorian fleet.

But too many Corsairs remained in pursuit. Even as he coursed their carefully chosen, deliberately foolish route, Thorongil and his men had to keep on fighting for their lives. It was dark away from the fires, and the sight of the flames blinded, rather than gave light. The Corsairs had the fire behind them. Thorongil stopped one blow; twisted, and avoided another. Another blow came in, but was stopped by one of Thorongil's men. The second time that happened, Thorongil realised that his men were guarding him, agreeing without words to form a living shield.

"No," he commanded. "No." He thought they would understand. They drew back just a little. A cluster of trees hid their view of the bay. When they had cleared it, Thorongil saw a flaming arrow arc from the quay, to fall just short of the shadowed Gondorian ship that was anchored in the bay. Thorongil spared it barely a glance. The nearest enemy gave a bitter laugh.

The man on Thorongil's right gave a faint gasp, and fell to his knees. Thorongil helped him up. His self-appointed guard covered them as he looked once, keenly, into the wounded man's eyes. "Eradan?" He spoke his name just once. The wounded man blinked once, slowly, his eyes screwing up in pain, then gave a brisk nod. By the time they carried on, two of the Corsairs lay dead on the ground.

The pursuers were slow to realise that Thorongil was not, in fact, heading to the shingle beach. The Corsairs who lay there in ambush were quicker, or else too consumed with hatred and grief to commit themselves to patient waiting. They found the hidden Gondorian boats, and burned them. The flames were visible through the trees, and Thorongil was still close enough to hear the Corsairs' screams of furious hatred.

Eradan's steps started to slow. The pursuers surged forward. Thorongil took down one, then two. They gained another dozen steps, then another. Thorongil fought one-handed, holding Eradan up with the other. And then Hithon was there, with two dozen men behind him in the darkness, which was at once according to plan, but at the same time completely against it. Thorongil looked at Hithon, but that was all he had time for, for there was work to be done.

They made an end of it, there on the wooden shoreline, less than a mile from the blazing fleet. Thorongil killed, and he killed again. Step by defiant step, they retreated back the way they needed to go, and fewer and fewer pursued them. Thorongil was torn away from Eradan, caught up in the desperate dance of the battle. "Captain?" he heard, quite a long time later; Hithon almost touching his shoulder, but not quite. "We need…"

"I know, Hithon," Thorongil said. "I know."

Eradan was still on his feet, but only just. Many of his men moved with the stiffness of bleeding wounds. Two lay unmoving on the ground. A dozen Corsairs lay dead, and the rest had fled, or at least had feigned a flight. Less than a mile from a roaring conflagration, all was silent.

Thorongil began to move back the way they had come, heading for the fallen bodies of his two men. "Captain…" Hithon began, and another man – Duinor, he thought – came right out with it, saying "my lord…" before he, too, stopped.

He knew there might be arrows. He crouched down beside the first man, and knew that he was dead. "Thannor." Thorongil spoke his name as he closed the dead man's eyes. The second one was badly wounded, but still alive. Thorongil lifted him carefully. He did not have to speak to convey his will. Hithon spoke the necessary commands, and two men came forward to raise Thannor and carry him home.

_Home, _he thought, as he walked away from the fires, and into the darkness.

* * *

It was almost morning before there was time to talk.

Thorongil came up to Hithon was he was cleaning his sword. By silent agreement, they walked together to the prow of the ship, where the wind blew cold and sharp. Even so, it was not enough to drive out the lingering smell of death and smoke.

They were silent for a while, as the sky slowly lightened in the east. "It was not supposed to be you," Thorongil said at last.

"It was not supposed to be me, Captain," Hithon agreed. Hithon's task had been to lead the vast majority of the force away in secret to their true landing place, while Thorongil led the small party of decoys. After a mile, he was to send two dozen men to intercept Thorongil's pursuers, if such aid was needed. Instead, he had led those men himself, and left the main force in the command of Aelon, who was next in command below him.

"Can you explain?" Thorongil said it mildly, like a question, but of course it was more than that.

Hithon did not apologise; they had worked together too long for that. "Aelon is a competent man, Captain, and the danger was already past for us. The way ahead was clear. I judged that I had fulfilled my commands and seen the men to safety. I judged that my skills were better used coming back for you."

A seagull cried out above them, and the ripples of the sea were pink with the coming dawn. "You judged," Thorongil said quietly.

He heard rather than saw Hithon turn to face him. After a long moment, Thorongil turned towards him. His hair lashed across his face, and he raised an instinctive hand to push it back. As he did so, he noticed that his hands were still stained with soot and blood.

"Yes, Captain," Hithon said, his gaze steady. "I judged."

Not so many months ago, the two of them had crouched side by side in ditch, both of them wounded, knowing themselves surrounded. Dead men had surrounded them, not all of them foes. "Captain," Hithon had said, but Thorongil had shaken his head and asked Hithon to call him by name. After all, Thorongil had no formal rank within the hierarchy of Gondor, and Hithon had been a captain in his own right before Thorongil had seen his worth and asked him to join his campaign. Hithon had served with him ever since, but no formal oath bound them, one above the other.

But never once had Hithon called him anything but "captain."

Thorongil let out a breath. "Yes," he said, with the faintest of smiles. "I see."

On all his missions, Thorongil took only hand-picked men, taking them from different companies, and even from the levies of Gondor's lords. Sometimes they followed him for one mission alone, then returned to their regular postings. All were chosen for their intelligence as well as their skill at arms. He wanted men who knew how to obey, when they had to, but most of all, he wanted men who could think for themselves and survive alone.

"But I wish you had not," he said quietly. It was not quite a rebuke, but almost so.

"You can't die, Captain," Hithon said in a sudden rush. "You took the most dangerous task upon yourself, and I couldn't… I couldn't let…"

Thorongil stopped him with a shake of his head. Hithon was exhausted, he knew, and Thorongil could see by the way he was standing that he bore wounds under his armour. Pain and exhaustion was loosening his tongue.

But Thorongil, too, was exhausted, and he, too, bore wounds. Although he said nothing, his thoughts must have been too clear on his face. "You think I'm delirious, Captain," Hithon said, "but I'm not. You're the best hope we've had in Gondor for a generation. Better a dozen men die than we lose you."

And Thorongil, who was not after all called Thorongil, had to turn his face away, and gaze north, towards the far-distant mountains of Gondor.

_It is time, _he thought. _I know this. I do._

* * *

It was raining when they reached Pelargir.

Thorongil had managed to sleep for three hours, that last night at sea. Then he had lain awake in his cabin for an hour longer, staring at the thin lines of light that came through the planking, and thinking of far too many things. At length he had forced himself to sleep for a little while longer, for he knew that this was the last time for many a moon that he would lie on even such a bed as this.

His men were too well trained to cheer him when he emerged on the deck, but their eyes blazed warmly even so. They watched him as he looked up at the grey sky; as he wrapped his cloak closer around his body; even as he turned his face away from them all.

It was a singular triumph, everyone agreed. They had lost one ship to the enemy's fire arrows, but only an empty one, left as deliberate sacrifice. They had allowed a dozen boats to be burnt, but they had brought twice as many boats as they needed. Nine men had died. Eight of them had died in the confusion on the quay, and their bodies would never return home. Thannor lay below. Thorongil would not be the one to bring the news to his widow.

Nine dead. Nine dead because Thorongil had hand-picked them for this mission. Thannor had been one of those who had given himself to task of guarding Thorongil during the retreat. Had he died because he had valued Thorongil's life above his own?

_No, _thought Thorongil, because he knew enough now about what it meant to be a captain, and he knew, too, the exigencies of the times they lived in. Thannor had died because they were at war. Thannor had died to save the thousands more who would have died had the fleets of Umbar been allowed to grow unchecked.

"Raise the flags," he commanded, as the lead ship drew close to the port. The first flag to go up was the flag of Gondor, but without the crown that had once adorned it. The second was that of the stewards, and the third was the flag of victory. They were limp in the rain, the white tree dull and faded. Thorongil looked upwards, and for a moment, his vision faded, and he thought he saw the banner of Gondor flying alone, surmounted with a crown, sparkling like sunlight after rain. Then he blinked, and the vision faded, and all was dark and drear again.

Already the quaysides were filling with people. Few had seen Thorongil's fleet depart in the night, and even fewer had known their destination or purpose, but the flag of victory told its own tale. It was seen so seldom in these days.

Hithon was moving stiffly, his wounds bandaged below his armour. "I imagine it will be quite a reception, Captain." He made no reference to their conversation in the prow of the ship. "But when we return to Minas Tirith, that will be a celebration such as the city has never seen."

Thorongil nodded. The rain was fine, seeping through a tear in his cloak that he had not known was there.

"The Lord Steward will heap you with honours." Hithon grinned; he could never know that his words were knives.

"And you, I hope," Thorongil said. "You still have a captain's rank. You had a company of your own once. You should have one again, the very best."

"I do not wish for one," Hithon said warmly, his heart in his eyes.

It was time. This was right.

Aragorn walked to the helmsman and gave his orders, then asked the signaller to convey them to the other ships. True to his commands, the leading ship slowed, and the other ships edged past her, heading into port ahead of them.

"Captain?" There was a faint line between Hithon's brows. But if Hithon was frowning, the other men were grinning. They thought their Captain sought to enter Pelargir last of all, entering like a king with the other ships as his harbingers. In all his years in Gondor, Captain Thorongil had never courted honours, although honour had come to him, even so. Perhaps they considered that this victory, this greatest of all victories, had finally led their captain to seek the adulation of the people.

After so many years, Aragorn had thought that he knew well the hearts of men. When he saw how his men were grinning, he realised that he had not known them fully, after all.

The first ship docked, and then the second, and the third, but the last… The last still lingered.

It was time. It was time.

The rain grew heavier, and the twilight thickened. "Not yet," Aragorn said, but whether it was to Hithon or to himself, he no longer knew. He went down to his cabin, and came up with his pack: the things he had brought with him to Gondor so long ago, and a very few small things that he had acquired there.

Hithon was still frowning. The frown deepened when he saw the pack, and deepened even more when the wind stirred Aragorn's cloak and showed that he no longer wore armour. "I will not be returning to Minas Tirith," Aragorn said. He said it gently, which probably made it even worse.

"My lord…" said Hithon: a title the son of Arathorn had every right to; a title Captain Thorongil had no right to.

Aragorn shook his head. "It is time for me to leave. I told the Lord Ecthelion when I arrived that it would not be forever. I have fulfilled the purpose I was working towards. It is time to seek other paths."

Hithon was shaking his head from side to side; Hithon, who was a captain in his own right. "Why, my lord?"

"Not lord." Aragorn touched him just once on the shoulder, and felt that Hithon was trembling. "As to why…" He could not give him the full answer, but perhaps he could give him one true thread of it. "Hithon," he said, "listen to the crowds. Look at their faces. Remember what you said about the manner of our homecoming." He saw Hithon close his eyes. Hithon was a clever man, and he understood. "This is not the time for Gondor to be divided."

When Hithon opened his eyes, they were shining with unshed tears. "But…"

"No." Aragorn shook his head. "You know how it will be," he said, "if I return to Minas Tirith after this."

"But perhaps…"

Aragorn held up a hand, and stopped Hithon short. Intent upon his path, Aragorn had been slow to realise the damage that Captain Thorongil had been doing in Gondor, but now that his eyes were open, it was unmistakable. _Perhaps it would be no bad thing, _Hithon was thinking. _Perhaps you, not Denethor, should rule in Minas Tirith after Ecthelion is gone. _

_Speak no treason, _Aragorn almost said, but he did not, because sometimes a thought remained just a thought, barely noticed until somebody else put words to it. "This is how it has to be, Hithon," he said quietly. "I will take a boat and sail across the Anduin." _And that will be the end of it, _he thought.

"And the Lord Steward?" Hithon said. "What shall we tell him?"

"Tell him…" They were cheering on the quayside now, welcoming the first of his men. "Tell him these words: 'Other tasks now call me, lord, and much time and many perils must pass, ere I come again to Gondor, if that be my fate.' Just that."

"Ere you come again?" echoed Hithon, who had made no oaths to any lord less than the Steward himself.

"If that be my fate," Aragorn said.

The other men had noticed that something was wrong. They stood in a loose circle in the rain, and they looked as bleak as the twilight. Many of them could hear. No words were said.

"Lord Ecthelion will be angry," Hithon said. "He will say we should have stopped you."

"Please," said a voice; Aragorn did not know who it was. "How can we stop you?"

"He might be angry at first," Aragorn conceded, "but he will know that you could not stop me. He is not a petty man, and he values men of worth. You will not suffer because of this; I know this."

Hithon's hands were clenched at his side, his knuckles white, and shining with rain. Aragorn had never bound him with a true command. Hithon had been a captain before Thorongil had arrived in Gondor, and would have risen higher still, had he not made the choices he had made. His loyalty was evident, but he had sworn no formal oaths.

"I command it, Hithon," Aragorn said, and although his voice was mild, his eyes were steel. "Let me go unhindered. Do not seek to follow. Accept the rank you deserve." He did not say _forget me, _because he knew that some things could not be done. "Do my will in this," he commanded, addressing it not just to Hithon, but to all the others that clustered around, uncomprehending. "Let me go."

Hithon bowed his head, and pressed both clenched fists against his breast as he heaved in a shuddering breath. Then he raised his head again, and his eyes were dry. "Yes," he said, accepting the lifeline Aragorn had thrown him. "Yes, Captain. It shall be as you command."

* * *

Three of them accompanied him across the river, in the end. Hithon came, of course. Eradan, although wounded, begged to come. Duinor, a natural boatman and a strong rower, took the oars. Aelon, almost as trusted as Hithon, had already reached Pelargir on a different ship. Aragorn had watched him standing on the quayside, thronged around with triumphant crowds, but seeing none of them; seeing only the boat that was taking his captain across the river for a reason that he did not yet understand.

"Say farewell to Aelon for me," Aragorn said, but he could not stop at that. He named them all, each and every one of them who had come with him on this desperate venture.

He wanted to apologise. He knew no apology could make things better.

The small boat reached the shallows off the eastern shore. Since nobody else was moving, Aragorn jumped into the water, and made as if to drag the boat onto the narrow beach, then stopped. It was almost fully dark now, although lights blazed in Pelargir across the Anduin.

Leaving Rohan had been far from easy, but bearable. Leaving the lands to the far south had been a relief. Leaving the north at the start of it…? It had been easier than he had expected, for the Dúnedain, as Gandalf had predicted, had understood the need for it. It would be a far easier thing, Berenor had explained, to give orders in the name of a distant Chieftain who still lived, than to do so in the place of a Chieftain who might be dead all along.

Leaving Gondor was always going to be hardest of all, because Gondor was an ancient city of the kings, the only one that still remained. In the north, the Dúnedain preserved the memories of the past, but did so amongst ruins in the wild. In the south, many memories were forgotten, but the city remained, and there was still honour and glory there, more than he had looked to find.

Leaving Gondor was always going to be painful, then, but what Aragorn had not fully realised was that the full weight of pain would fall upon others.

He could not apologise. He could not. It would make things worse for them, he knew.

All he said was farewell. Then he turned his back to the river, and headed off alone into the shadows.

He asked them not to follow him, and then, just before the end, his heart misgave him, and he turned it into a command.

They obeyed. They were hand-picked men; of course they obeyed him.

* * *

Later, much later, he thought that perhaps he should have just asked. But that was in the night time, on the edges of Mordor. Doubts always thronged most thickly in the night time, and the Land of Shadow was a place where he had never walked.

It was a long walk, many days, into the Mountains of Shadow. He knew he should take it slowly. Despite their days at sea, he was still weary from the battle, and although the healers had tended him, he still bore wounds beneath his clothing. In the Land of Shadow, more than anywhere, there was need for stealth. Yet even so, on the first few days he walked from before dawn until well after nightfall.

Those were the days that took him through Southern Ithilien, where birds still sang, and flowers grew. He tried to take pleasure in the beauties of nature, as once he had done, but he could not see it. He tried to find the peace that he had always found in walking alone, but it was gone. He could not forget the devastated faces of those he had left behind.

At night time on the third day, he crossed the Poros, but not at the ford, where the old road ran. The Rangers of Ithilien still watched the crossings, and he had no desire to be seen by them. On the southern bank, where he walked on the fourth day, scouts from Harad kept watch, and parties of orcs often came down from the mountains. Three years before, Thorongil and a dozen men had won a swift victory here against a nest of the enemy's agents. He avoided the battle site. He avoided the watching eyes.

The land around him began to rise, and soon there were no flowers. The Poros ran through barren rock, but some of the trees were still alive: evergreens with sharp dark needles and narrow cones. He kept on the southern side of the river, hoping that the mountains would be less well guarded there, where few from Gondor ever trod. Sometimes he heard creatures passing in the night, but he kept himself hidden, and was never found.

Half way up the mountain, the path ahead was blocked. Hidden by darkness, he scrambled down the cleft of the valley, and recrossed the Poros, just above a waterfall. The climb on the other side was ever more sheer. He made another half mile, perhaps not even that, and slumped down in the rift between two jagged boulders.

His head fell back against the rock. He drank from his water bottle, and found the water still piercingly cold. The battle on the quay had left him with a slash across the ribs, and it hurt with the sharp ache of a healing wound.

He tried to sleep. He could not.

But perhaps, in a way, he did sleep, although he thought he did not. Not long before morning, his thoughts ran strange. He saw Hithon and Aelon and Eradan. He saw Thannor, dead beneath his touch. He saw Ecthelion, bereft on his seat beneath the throne, his eyes shining with unshed tears. He saw Halbarad, who had come closest of all the Dúnedain to weeping at Aragorn's departure, although he had not wept.

He saw Gandalf as he had been when they had met in the Westfold, nearly ten years before. "A time of choice is coming for all the free peoples of Middle Earth," Gandalf said. "They will need to choose whose counsel to take. They will need to choose whether to stand against the enemy, or retreat behind their walls. There are many ways to direct the affairs of the great ones, without them being aware that they are being directed. See if you can find a way to do that, in Rohan first, I think, but in Gondor most of all. A choice is coming to them, and I would that they choose wisely, for the future of Middle Earth could depend on it."

"I will try," Aragorn said now, beneath the boulders of the Mountains of Shadow; or maybe it was, "I tried."

Something passed above him, a shadow against the coming dawn. Aragorn curled deeper into the shadows.

He saw Gandalf again, from another time, when Aragorn had just come out of Harad. He had played a dark part there, and he had spent the best part of a year uttering lies, and pretending to despise everything he believed in. When he had learned everything he thought he could safely learn, he had dragged himself free, and returned to Gandalf to tell him what he could. Gandalf had not smiled. "My dear boy," he had said then, as he said again now, in Aragorn's memory. "I think you should return to Rivendell for a season. You deserve the rest. You need it."

"No." Aragorn shook his head; there on the mountain, he shook his head. "I need…"

_Need to erase the memory with fresh deeds. Need to remind myself that there is goodness and fellowship in Men. Need to keep travelling, to keep striving, to keep fighting._

The shadow returned, passed over, and went again. The day, when it came, was grey with cloud, and a fine rain started to fall, as had fallen at Pelargir.

He waited until twilight before he started to climb again, moving slowly now, because it would be death to do otherwise. At dawn, he reached the top of a lesser mountain, little more than a saddle between two enormous peaks, and started to descend. After another day, he turned north, scouting out the foothills of the dark enclosing walls of Mordor.

Not even Gandalf knew that Aragorn intended to enter Mordor. Until Pelargir, Aragorn had not truly known it himself. He had known when he had left for Umbar that if victorious, he would never return to Minas Tirith, but he had not yet chosen the path that he would take. But Mordor was the last remaining place that he had not been. For years, he had helped ready the free peoples of Middle Earth for war against Mordor. One day, perhaps, it would be his fate to lead armies against Sauron. He could not do so if he knew nothing of the land and its strengths. He could not do so if he feared even to look upon its shadow.

North he went, then, marking the distant encampments, counting their numbers, as well as he could, by the number of fires he saw on the plain.

The third day was one of watery sunshine, faint behind a thin grey mist. Aragorn settled himself beneath an overhanging outcrop, and prepared to last out the day. The wound on his side was throbbing sharply. He took out his herbs and tended it as well as he could. It was not healing properly, but would heal in the end.

_If I rest, _he thought, because he could not rest.

He thought of the moment they had landed near Umbar, hundreds of men staking their lives on his plan. He remembered the moment when the Captain of the Havens had rallied his men, earlier than Aragorn had hoped, before all the fires were fully set. He remembered those first deaths, far away in the north. He remembered the last: Thannor, dead beneath his touch.

He remembered his first sight of the forces of Umbar, two years before, when he had gone alone to scout them out. He had been afraid then, knowing what would happen one day in the future, if he could not persuade Ecthelion to let him go to war. He remembered the fear he had lived with in Harad. He felt the terror of the Barrow Wight, calling him to dust.

His hand scrabbled in the barren ground, seeking purchase. His heart was pounding in his ears. He wanted to curl up small. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to leap from this place and run away. He wanted to burrow so deep beneath the ground that he would never be found. He reached instead for his sword, and managed to draw it, but his hand was slick with cold sweat and his arm was quaking, and he could barely hold it.

_Elbereth! _thought the tiny part of his mind that still retained rational thought. _Arwen! _Arwen, walking in beauty beneath the birches. It was a Nazgûl. It had to be a Nazgûl. A Nazgûl had found him.

His terror was cold claws at his throat. _I cannot move. It cannot find me. _His lips moved silently, whispering the name of Elbereth, of Arwen, of his father in Rivendell, and his mother and his brothers, who could comfort a boy who was lost in the dark.

_No. _He scraped a shaking hand across his face. He still spoke the name of Elbereth, still clung to the memory of Arwen, but he dragged to mind the memory of Ecthelion, of Thengel, of Berenor… of Gandalf, who trusted him to walk the path that he had chosen.

_Nazgûl, _he told himself, repeating it again and again, that name of evil alternating with the name of Elbereth and light. The fear was not natural. The fear was not real.

_Not real? _something screamed inside him, bowed down with fear. _Not real? If the Nazgûl takes me… If Sauron finds me… _Lost. All would be lost.

He still held his sword. He wrenched his gaze down to the blade, and gripped the hilt tighter. "Elbereth," his lips whispered soundlessly. "Arwen. Gandalf."

The rock shaded him, but when he moved his head to the side, turning it away in denial, he could see a small expanse of the slopes below him. The Nazgûl was there. Here, so far away from human habitation, it wore no robes. It was a faint shape, a shimmering, a patch of wrongness in the mist. It passed close to him, almost close enough to touch. A breath that was not the wind stirred a fold of Aragorn's cloak.

Aragorn pressed his head back against the rock, pushing hard enough to hurt. His knuckles were white on his sword. He bit his lip, and drew blood; it welled inside his mouth, for he did not dare let it flow free. He managed to keep his breathing in check; to keep it from rasping with the rhythm of his dread.

The Nazgûl passed by. Aragorn waited. He counted to a hundred, then a hundred more. He named all the stars whose names he knew, and brought to mind the pattern of those whose names he knew not. The sharp edge of the terror left him. The terror of the Nazgûl was worse when they were not shrouded in robes: he had read that somewhere. He stirred, as much as he dared, and looked out. The Nazgûl moved like the memory of smoke across the mountain. It was half a mile away, and moving fast.

Aragorn knew he should wait still longer, but he found himself leaving before he had finished numbering the stars. Scrambling out from his hiding place, he began to climb. He had to get away. He had to leave Mordor. The very dust of it clung to his hands like poison. He scraped them down his clothes. His clothes, too, were tainted with it.

He climbed, scrambled, scraped his hands to raw skin and blood, and kept on climbing. Night found him cresting the ridge of the mountains. Far away to the north-west lay Minas Tirith, but it was too far away to see.

He clambered downwards, seeking footholds in the dark. Several times he almost fell. The fourth time, he failed to catch himself, and slid down a dozen feet of loose scree, before he stopped himself against a rock. Stones slithered downwards when he tried to rise.

_Stay, _he thought. _Stop. Wait. _

He could not sleep. He did not think to try. Instead he thought of his dead, and all those people whose lives had changed because he had come to Minas Tirith. They had followed him not because they had to, but because they wanted to. He remembered himself, so young and foolish, talking to Gandalf near the Barrow Downs. Then he had thought what a terrible thing it was that men would follow him to their deaths, just because of who his father had been. He had wanted to learn how to be worthy of that loyalty. He had wanted to learn how to lead not through his name, but because of what lay within him.

_And I got that wish. _He laughed bitterly to himself. He scraped his hand across his brow, and it came away damp. His men at Umbar had followed him not because he was their lord, not even because he was their commander in any formal hierarchy of Gondor's military, but because…

Thunder rumbled far away to the south. It started to rain, light at first, but growing heavier. The rain turned the dust on his hands to dark mud. He tried to rub it away, but it still remained.

He thought of Halbarad, of Hithon, of the men who had followed him in so many places, when he had gone by so many names.

He could not escape it. There was no escaping it. He had come south because…

"Because I was running away." He said it out loud, and there was no denying it after that. From the moment he had first joined the Dúnedain, he had felt the pressure of being the embodiment of all their hopes, when they were so much older than he was. But five years later, Berenor had been on the point of ceding command. Aragorn knew this. He had always known it. Aragorn had been on the cusp of becoming Chieftain in reality as well as just in name…

And he had left. "Run away," he whispered. Left.

For the first year, he had wandered mostly alone. Then he had gone to far places, a humble warrior of no great renown. He had sought to watch from the fringes, and to learn. But wherever he went, and whatever name he took, within months he had men turning to him, expecting him to lead. And whenever he led, people died.

He saw them all, as he shivered in the rain on the slopes of Mordor. He saw the dead men of Rohan, and the slaves he could not save in Harad. He saw the men who had died on the quays of Umbar. He saw the men in Harad whom he had betrayed: men who served an evil cause, but still could laugh and love, and had offered friendship to a stranger who lied in every word.

_You bring death, _they told him. _That is your birthright. Death is the legacy of your blood. _

He left in the hour of victory. That was what they sang in Rohan; that was what they might one day sing in Minas Tirith. But it was never victory. He left when the toll of death became too high. He left, and took another name, and started again in a place where he could be anonymous, with no lives resting in the palm his hand. And there it had started again. It always started again.

_Better to turn your face towards Mordor, _he thought, _and walk into the very heart of Shadow itself._

"No."

He scarcely recognised the voice when he heard it, but it was his own. It was hoarse with exhaustion, but it was his own. He raised his head. He pressed his hands against his eyes, wiping away mud with pure rain. Then he exhaled; breathed in a lungful of air, and let it out again.

_The Black Breath, _he thought. He remembered the way his cloak had stirred at the Nazgûl's passing. He had not been struck by the Nazgûl, or even been the object of its regard, but it had passed close enough to wound him. The Black Breath was a pall of misery that shrouded a man's heart, making him lose even the last memory of light. This was just a glancing touch, but it had almost been too much.

Aragorn fumbled at his pack. He had found kingsfoil some months before, growing forgotten in a deserted cottage garden, and had harvested what he could. It was dry now, of course, but enough of its virtue remained. He crumbled it and rubbed it between rain-soaked palms. Then he breathed into his cupped hands, and inhaled.

It helped. The athelas gave clarity of another sort, too. His mind had been clouded ever since he entered Mordor, he realised. He had pushed himself too far. The wound on his side was worse than ever, adding a touch of fever that the athelas could not heal. He bathed it, bound it, and there on the edges of Mordor, he even managed to sleep for a few hours.

He resumed the following day, moving slowly, steadily, carefully. The dark imaginings of the Black Breath were… true in a way, he decided, but only partially so. Yes, men had died because they had followed his commands, but many more had been saved. Dark times were coming for Middle Earth, and in dark times, people died. In every war, there had to be a leader. Men died because of the decisions that leader made, but if he shied away from making those decisions, even more would die. It was the leader's responsibility to make sure that the deaths were as few as possible, and always in a good cause.

This was just how it was. Aragorn had been born to lead. His travels had taught him how to lead. In the north, he led because of who his father had been. In the south, he came with no name at all, but led because of whatever strength lay within him. Perhaps, one day, the two threads would come together, and he would be Isildur's Heir indeed.

But not today. Today he headed north and west, in the direction of Minas Tirith, although he would not return there, and perhaps he never would.

Why did men such as Hithon follow him? The first flower bloomed beside his path, and away to the west, he could see the Anduin sparkling in the sun. It was not because of sworn duty. It was not obligation. Perhaps it was love: he had come to realise that, just before the end. But he hoped that it was because they trusted him not to waste their lives. They were willing to die, yes, but they trusted him enough to believe that their deaths would not be in vain.

They trusted him to mourn them, but to carry on.

Good had come from his decision to enter Mordor. The Black Breath had brought him close to despair, but it had also brought out into the light the fears and doubts that still sometimes haunted him. It had taken those doubts and twisted them into grotesque parodies of the truth, and by doing so, it had allowed him to see them for what they were.

Every man had doubts, but he, Aragorn, still had hope. He would waver at times, but he would walk his course.

It was time to go home, he thought. Nearly thirty years ago, he had walked in the woods of Rivendell, flushed with the glory of his new-found lineage, and determined to prove himself worthy of his name. That early pride had not survived his meeting with Arwen, but the dream remained. He would prove himself worthy of her, not just because of his lineage, but because of himself. It had been a child's dream, in a way, but now, perhaps, he had at last shaken off the last of his childhood. He was who he was meant to be.

It was time to go home.


	5. Homecoming

**V: Epilogue: Homecoming**

_After many dangers, Aragorn is returning to the north. It is not an ending, but perhaps, perhaps, it will be the start of the life that is still to come._

* * *

There were wood anemones beside the path, and red campion amongst the trees. A blackbird was singing from a high place, and a wren darted into a hawthorn bush, thick with white blossom.

Aragorn dismounted at the crossroads, and crouched to touch the flowers, but gently, his fingertips barely brushing the petals.

These were the flowers of Eriador. He had never seen wood anemones in the south, and there was no red campion in Gondor. The smell of hawthorn made him twenty-one again, out with the Dúnedain during the first spring he had spent with them. It was strange how scent could bring back memories so.

Mounting again, he headed west. It was nearly twenty-five years since he had left Eriador. Many things had changed. The flowers still grew, but he could not expect the people to be unchanged.

It was the people he thought about most, as he neared the end of his journey. It was strange, that. During his six years with the Dúnedain, he had spent much of his time walking alone, away from them.

But many things had changed. He smiled up at the sunshine. Oh so many things had changed!

He had reached Lothlórien two months after leaving Mordor. Despite the realisations he had come to on the slopes of the Mountains of Shadow, the journey had been difficult, and he had been weary both in body and mind. He had not thought to enter those woods, but Galadriel herself had sent elves to bring him in. She knew much about his wanderings, more than he would have thought. She seemed to know that he had almost passed into the shadow, but had found his way out again.

"You have gone by many names," she said, "and played many parts, from the moment of your birth, until this very day. I am glad to be the first to see you as you truly are."

He did not know what to say, for she was beautiful and mighty, and she knew his mind. He bowed his head, and begged her leave to stay a single night, before travelling on to Rivendell.

"Nay," she said, smiling, "not for a single night. Stay as long as you will." And she called for clothes to be brought for him, and Aragorn saw that they were silver and white, as an elf-lord might wear. Afterwards, she came to him once more, and she smiled again, although there was a sadness in her eyes that he did not then understand. "You are free to wander where you will, for I cannot stop what is meant to be."

And so it was, beneath the trees of gold, that he saw Arwen once more, and Arwen saw him. In that moment, in that night, in that season, he thought he knew what it was to come home.

But no homecoming could last forever. His path was clear; he had realised that much on the slopes of Mordor. They parted, as they had to part. And the heir of Isildur could have no single home. Home was Rivendell, and home was wherever Arwen was. Home was with his people in the north, and it was Gondor, too. He belonged to all the free places of Middle Earth. He could find a refuge in many places, but he would always move on.

Rivendell, home of his childhood, had been a different sort of homecoming, and one tainted with sadness, because a shadow now lay between him and Elrond. Now Aragorn's own hopes were bound up with his duty. It made surprisingly little difference, really. He had already known what he had to do.

In the wilds of Eriador lay a homecoming of yet another kind. Until he had seen the flowers, Aragorn had not realised how much he had missed this place. He had spent six years with the Dúnedain. Until now, he had not realised how many memories those years had left him with.

Even the Prancing Pony was fiercely familiar, despite the passage of time. Relishing a long mouthful of beer, Aragorn settled back against the old familiar bench. Butterbur was no longer in charge, but his son ran affairs with the same cheerful attentiveness. Aragorn inhaled the sweet smell of smoke, and returned to the bar to buy a pipe and a pouch of pipeweed. Returning to the bench, he propped his feet up on a stool, and let himself get wreathed in aromatic smoke.

"Haven't seen you around here before," said the younger Butterbur, when the crowds thinned enough for him to indulge in his evident love of gossip.

"I used to drink here long ago." Aragorn used his Breelander accent. It was nearly twenty-five years since he had even heard it, but he settled into it as if he had never been away. "I've been on a long journey," he explained. "A very long journey."

Butterbur's eyes flickered towards Aragorn's travel-worn boots resting on the stool, then back to his face. "Are you one of them Rangers? You have something of the look of one, but not quite."

"That I am," Aragorn admitted. "Have any of them been here lately?"

Butterbur frowned. "Not as I can remember. The last one was… ooh, two months ago? A tall fellow, but not as tall as you. No point asking him his name, of course. He went striding off again, the way those Rangers do – begging your pardon, sir, since you're one of them."

Aragorn smiled, and bought more beer to show that no offence had been taken. He gathered what tidings he could, but Butterbur had little to tell him. Most of the battles that took place in Eriador did so out in the wilds, and the common folk knew nothing about them.

The following morning, he headed north. On the third morning, he reached a steep sided valley, where a narrow stream raced across grey stones. Two sharp rocks reached out across the water like a pair of pointing fingers. Aragorn scratched his mark in the taller of them, where the shorter rock would hide it from anyone who did not know to look. The next day, he did the same on an old standing stone, left by the earliest Men. At noon he marked a boulder by a ford. At nightfall, he left his sign on the fork of a tree, where two tracks parted.

He wondered who would come. He settled down for the night in an old, familiar resting place, and wondered if it would happen tomorrow.

Only one came in the end. Aragorn did not know him at first, but then the other man smiled, an anxious, tremulous smile, like that of a man who could not quite believe that the source of his joy was truly real.

"My lord," Halbarad said. His hand rose almost to his mouth, then fell back again. "My lord Aragorn. Is it really you?"

"It is, Halbarad," Aragorn said.

"I saw the marks." Halbarad gestured faintly in the direction he had come. "I could scarcely believe…" For a moment, he looked seventeen again, overcome with emotion. Then he passed his hands across his face, and became the experienced Dúnedain that he had long since become. "I hoped it was you. I could not believe it."

Aragorn gave a fleeting smile. "But it is true."

They were still at arm's length, with twenty-five years standing in the space between them.

"Why leave the signs, then?" Halbarad asked. "You know where our settlements are. Why not approach openly?"

Why not indeed? "I have no desire to sweep down upon you and throw everyone into consternation," Aragorn said. "You should be free to choose the manner of our meeting. I owe you that much."

Halbarad shook his head. "You owe us nothing, my lord." And still there was that gaping space between them.

"I do," said Aragorn.

A robin sang from the branches of a birch tree. Leaves stirred in the breeze. Behind him, in the shade, Aragorn's horse snorted and rattled its harness.

"Will you stay? Will you stay this time?" There was an echo of that lost seventeen year old in Halbarad's voice.

"For a while," Aragorn said. "I cannot stay for ever. War is coming. You know this, Halbarad. The war involves all the free peoples of the world. You know who I am. You know whose heir I am. I cannot fight it merely in the north."

"I… see," said Halbarad. For a moment it had looked as if he had been about to say something else.

"But for a while," Aragorn said with a smile. "A few years, perhaps. And after that, I will come back often."

"And when you are away?"

Halbarad knew nothing about the man he had become, Aragorn realised. The last time they had seen each other, Aragorn had been a young man of twenty-six, still struggling with the burdens of command. In the years that followed, Aragorn had learned the ways of leadership, but Halbarad did not know that. Yet, despite that, Halbarad seemed to take it for granted that Aragorn was the best person to lead them in the years to come.

"You are strong," Aragorn said. "All of you, you are strong. You survived so many years without me."

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say. It was harder, somehow, to deal with someone he had known so long ago, when he had been unsure of himself, than it was to deal with someone new. "Yes, we survived," said Halbarad. There was almost bitterness in his tone.

Gandalf had brought scant news of the Dúnedain, but just enough for Aragorn to know that all was well, as much as it ever was with such a scattered, dispossessed people. Elrond had told him a little more. Before Aragorn had gone away, he had decreed who would lead in his name. Berenor would keep command for as long as he wished it, and Halbarath would take it after that. Nobody asked him to name a formal heir in case he never returned. If he died, then the line of Isildur had ended. If he died, in many ways the Dúnedain would cease to exist. They would continue to protect the lands of the north, but it would not be the same. They would need captains, but not a Chieftain chosen by blood.

To fulfil the hopes of his people, Aragorn had to live. But the only way he could truly fulfil their hopes – the only way he could achieve his own desire – was to go out and fight. And if he did not… If he did not, then he did not deserve the honours that went with his name. In Umbar, he had chosen to lead the most dangerous part of the mission, against Hithon's wishes. Hithon knew that a captain needed to stay alive. Captain Thorongil had known this, too, but he had also known that if he was to be worth following at all, a captain needed to know when to risk his own life when the cause was right.

"Your father leads them now," Aragorn said. "Gandalf told me."

"Yes." Halbarad nodded. "Ten years, now. Berenor hung up his sword, but still lives. It will give him great joy to see you again." He swallowed; moistened his lips. Aragorn was his weakness, Aragorn realised, with a sudden flash of insight. With anyone else, in any other situation, Halbarad would be as stern as granite, and as strong. "The sons of Elrond brought us news," he said, "but not much, and not often. We knew that you lived. We knew you were winning great renown in the south. We wondered…"

He said nothing more. Aragorn did not need to hear it. _We wondered if you would ever come back. _

"It was for a purpose," Aragorn said. "I had always planned on returning when the time was right."

"And now it is, my lord?" Halbarad asked.

"It is." Aragorn nodded. "I will become your Chieftain in fact, as well as in name."

"For a little while," Halbarad said. "My lord."

Aragorn did not plan what happened next. He closed the gap between them, and grasped Halbarad by the forearm. "Halbarad," he said. "Listen to yourself. You are a man grown: not just any man, but one of the Dúnedain. You have committed feats that most of the men of Gondor would only dream of. You are no longer a child."

"You saved my life." A spark of anger blazed in Halbarad's eyes. "You are the only lord I have ever known."

"I saved your life," Aragorn said, "and you were seventeen, and I was five years older, a grown man in your eyes. But now we are so much older. Does five years make such a difference? I saved your life, yes. I expect you have saved many lives yourself. You may well save mine one day."

"But you are my Chieftain." Halbarad's eyes were still blazing. He was pulling against Aragorn's grip. "You are my liege lord."

Aragorn was relentless. "And on your last day of childhood, I saved your life. You shaped your early manhood around the pattern of your gratitude." He could have said 'worship,' but did not; he spared Halbarad that.

"You are my Chieftain," Halbarad said again. "Even the men of Gondor gave you great renown."

"I did not wish for renown." He was almost shouting it, he realised.

"What did you wish for?" Halbarad hurled back him. "What did you leave us for, then?"

_I wished to learn, _Aragorn thought. _I wished to learn the hearts of Men. I wished to become worthy of my birth. I wished to help prepare Middle Earth for a war. _

All of these were true. Instead he said the one thing that had never been part of it. "What would I wish for? I would wish for a friend," he said, suddenly quiet.

His brothers had loved him as family, old ones to a child. Berenor had respected his name, out of loyalty to Arathorn, his brother at arms. Halbarad, long ago, had revered him, but with the heart of a child. Hithon had been fiercely loyal, but had never called him by name, only by his rank. The Dúnedain had been bound to follow him by duty. Hithon had chosen to follow him because of his perceived worth. Aragorn was who he was, and he would have to accept both kinds of loyalty if he was to become anything more, but that was not all there was.

"I am Chieftain of the Dúnedain," he said, "and war is coming. None of us can escape that. But can you see a way to be a friend to me? I do not doubt your loyalty, but…"

And then suddenly, amazingly Halbarad laughed. "…you want me to be a little less loyal? Oh, my lord." But perhaps the laughter was closer to tears, really.

Aragorn made himself smile, but it would not last. "I would never doubt your loyalty," he said again, "but sometimes I am wrong. Sometimes I doubt my course. I have spent the last few years surrounded by men who would never accept that I do either. You are of the Dúnedain. I do not wish that from you – from any of you, and you least of all."

Halbarad almost spoke, but did not.

"I need someone I can talk to," Aragorn said. "Someone who knows who I am. Someone I can debate with. Someone who will question me. Someone who knows that my path will take me away. Someone strong enough not to need me to stay. A friend," Aragorn said firmly. "That is what I wish for, in you."

Halbarad was silent for a very long time. Sunlight dappled through the shivering birches, casting ever-changing shadows on his face.

"I think…" he said. "I hope… I do not know…" He smiled suddenly, turning his face into the unshadowed sun. "I will try."

And it was a start. On this day of homecoming, it was enough.

* * *

The end

* * *

**Note**: There is quite a story behind this one. Officially, I only started writing Lord of the Rings fanfic last autumn, although I have loved the book for decades. However, this is not entirely true. A dozen years ago, the movies reignited my old obsession, and I found myself writing a series of four short stories about Aragorn's backstory. Although I had already spent several years writing fanfic in other fandoms, I never intended to post these stories, and I never read any other LotR fanfic.

A few months ago, I revisited those old stories, and realised that there was quite a lot in there that I liked. Over the next few months, in between working on other stories, I set about rewriting them. And it was very much a rewrite. In some stories, not a single word remained of the original version. A fifth story appeared. All the others doubled in size. For example, the original version of the fourth story started with Aragorn entering Mordor; all the Umbar stuff is new. Strangely, about the only part of the story that survived more or less unchanged was virtually every word that Gandalf says. Gandalf, it seems, remains unchanged, even when the world changes around him.

While working on my rewrite, I deliberately didn't read other authors' versions of this period in Aragorn's life, but it's a fascinating subject, so now I've finished this, I definitely plan to see what other people have made of it.

By the way, chapter 4 (the Umbar/Mordor one) takes place in the same universe as my outsider viewpoint Thorongil story, A Captain and a Cause. It initially included a reference to Aragorn's encounter with the viewpoint character of that story, which happened just before he left for Umbar, but I decided that it would only confuse. However, Eradan, who appears in passing in this story, when "Thorongil" saves his life, appears in a few scenes in A Captain and a Cause, where he reveals just what his captain meant to him.

Sorry for such rambling notes, and thank you very much for reading. I do hope you liked it!


End file.
